The historic US trial against Google, accused of abusing the dominant position of its famous search engine, opened on Tuesday in a federal court in Washington.
The marathon trial, due to last ten weeks, is a crucial test for the US government, which has set itself up as a champion of competition law but is struggling to convince the courts.
“This case is about the future of the Internet, and whether Google's search engine will ever face meaningful competition,” opening prosecutor Kenneth Dintzer said.
According to the US Justice Department, Google built its empire through illegal contracts with companies such as Mozilla or Samsung and Apple to have its tool installed by default on their smartphones and services.
This domination of the Internet and therefore of digital advertising has enabled Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to become one of the richest companies in the world.
The evidence presented by the US government will show that Google misled the public and that it hid documents that it knew violated antitrust law, Kenneth Dintzer said.
With numerous witnesses in support, the Californian company will try to persuade federal judge Amit Mehta that the Justice Department’s accusations are unfounded.
“People don’t use Google because they have to - they use it because they want to," said Kent Walker, Alphabet’s general counsel. "It’s easy to change the default search engine, we’re not in the age of modems and CD-ROMs anymore.”
This is the biggest antitrust lawsuit brought against a major technology company since the Justice Department took on Microsoft over the dominance of the Windows operating system.
