After witness slip-up, Google rests its defense in marathon antitrust case 

WASHINGTON (CN) — Tuesday marked the 40th day of the federal government’s antitrust case against Google over the tech giant’s domination of the search engine market — and the end of Google's defense.

The week began with an accidental revelation from Google’s final witness, Chicago School economist Kevin Murphy, who let it slip during his testimony Monday that Google pays Apple 36% of its ad revenue — a detail of the contract making Google the default search engine on Safari browsers that the companies had previously kept under wraps.

It was revealed during trial that Google paid Apple approximately $26.3 billion in 2021 for exclusive default status. Google’s ad revenue was 81% of its total annual revenue for fiscal year 2021, approximately $258 billion, according to GlobalData. 

The Google-Apple contract has been a key piece of the trial; the federal government says the search giant shelled out massive amounts of money to other tech companies to maintain its dominance in the internet search market and block rivals from gaining exposure on browsers or from entering the market altogether.

Google also made exclusive default agreements with browsers Firefox and Opera, as well as with Samsung on its mobile devices to ensure that Google was the primary method for those internet users.

Evidence presented throughout the trial indicated Apple considered creating its own search engine and that Google paid Apple billions to prevent it from doing so. 

Google also worked to limit Apple’s ambitions with Siri and the Spotlight search feature on Mac computers: It amended its 2016 contract to direct any web queries from either feature to Google. 

Murphy, apparently having learned his lesson from Monday's ad revenue percentage slip-up, made sure to avoid specifying figures and took special care around redacted sections of slides during his cross-examination on Tuesday. 

In response to questions from Justice Department attorney Kenneth Dintzer, Murphy denied that Apple was actively considering creating its own search engine and that would have felt oppressed by its contract with Google.

Murphy's testimony echoed that of Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Apple senior vice president of services Eddy Cue, who have primarily rejected the federal government’s claims. 

During his time on the witness stand, Pichai said Google “fiercely competes” with Apple, as well as with other tech companies like Amazon, Booking.com and TikTok. Cue said Apple made the exclusive deals with Google because it provided the best product on the market and defended the agreements as mutually beneficial. 

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who has presided over the trial for the past 10 weeks, will hear rebuttal testimony from two more witnesses on Wednesday and Thursday this week, but a decision is not expected until spring 2024, after the parties have submitted their post-trial briefs in February and March and made their closing statements.

If the Barack Obama appointee rules against Google, it will begin the process for a so-called remedy trial; punishments for Google could include enjoining practices deemed anticompetitive, imposing fines or even order the company to sell off problematic parts of its business.

Google will likely appeal a ruling against it, and any remedy Mehta imposes, to the D.C. Circuit, and potentially to the Supreme Court, setting up the biggest antitrust trial since United States v. Microsoft Corp. in 1998 at the same federal courthouse in Washington.

In Microsoft, former U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Jackson, a Ronald Reagan appointee, ruled that Microsoft was a predatory monopoly and ordered the company to be split in half. His decision was later reversed by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in part because he had improperly discussed the case with journalists.

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