Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, testified on Monday that Google’s power in online search was so ubiquitous that even his company found it difficult to compete on the internet, becoming the government’s highest-profile witness in its
Nadella’s testimony underscored how entrenched Google has become in online search as the government seeks to prove that the company broke monopoly laws by forging anticompetitive deals to crush rivals. At the heart of the government’s case is the contention that Google illegally cemented its monopoly in online search by paying to be the default search engine on browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox, as well as on the home screen of smartphones. Google has argued that the default positions are not overwhelmingly powerful and that users can switch to a new search engine if they like.
In 2016, the public mudslinging seemed to come to an end with Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who were both new to their roles, declaring a détente. The rivalry had become a distraction, they said, and they had different priorities. On Monday, Schmidtlein sought to undermine Nadella’s testimony by suggesting that Microsoft’s failure to compete with Google was the result of an inferior product and a lack of investment.
While much of the trial has revolved around Google’s past behaviour, Nadella shifted some of the focus to the future and AI. Microsoft has invested $US13 billion in OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, which can now use Bing as a search default. Google has begun offering its own AI-powered chatbot, Bard.