Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella took the witness stand during the ongoing antitrust fight of the U.S. Justice Department’s with Alphabet’s Google. The government is likely to ask Nadella about the obstacles posed by Google’s dominance as Microsoft sought to grow Edge and Bing, its browser and search engine.
In its argument, the government said that Google, worth more than $1 trillion with some 90% of the search market, illegally paid $10 billion annually to smartphone makers like Apple and wireless carriers like AT&T and others to be the default search engine on their devices. The clout in search makes Google a heavy hitter in the lucrative advertising market, boosting its profits.
Google, on its part, has sought to show that the quality of its products is the reason for its success rather than illegal behaviour.
Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, long after the tech giant had faced its own federal antitrust lawsuit. That court fight, which began in 1998 and ended in a 2001 settlement, forced Microsoft to end some business practices and opened the door to companies like Google.
Google, on the other hand, was founded in 1998, and became an industry leading search engine. Both Microsoft and Google became bitter rivals. Both have browsers, search engines, email services and a host of other overlaps. They have recently become rivals in artificial intelligence, with Microsoft investing heavily in OpenAI and Google building the Bard AI chatbot among other investments.
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