(Bloomberg) — Judge Amit Mehta presided over two-day closing arguments, which concluded Friday, in the U.S. antitrust challenge against Alphabet Inc. He will now spend weeks or months reviewing a decision that could have significant consequences across the world. technology industry.
Most read on Bloomberg
Yet despite frequent pointed questions to both sides, the Obama-appointed federal judge has given few clues about what he plans to decide.
Antitrust authorities say Alphabet’s Google has illegally maintained a monopoly on online search and related advertising. On Thursday and Friday, Mehta reviewed the multibillion-dollar exclusive deals Google has made with Apple Inc. and others to become the default search engine on mobile phones and browsers. The judge then looked at Google’s lucrative advertising business of placing ads in search queries and the government’s view that the company’s dominant position allowed it to jack up advertisers’ prices. without consequences.
Closing arguments come six months after testimony ended last November, to give the judge time to review the evidence. This is the first antitrust lawsuit pitting the federal government against a U.S. technology company in more than two decades. Mehta is expected to issue a ruling later this year on whether Google broke the law, and his ruling could force the tech giant to change the way it does business, requiring the separation of Alphabet’s search business other products, like Android and Chrome.
In its defense, Google has argued that search ads are just one way for advertisers to reach consumers and that it is losing business to Amazon.com Inc. and TikTok by ByteDance Ltd.
Mehta seemed skeptical.
“Advertisers were coming in and constantly saying, ‘We can’t get away from search ads.’ They are unique,” Mehta said.
No other choice
Justice Department attorney David Dahlquist said advertisers have no choice to reach the largest number of consumers other than through Google’s search ads product – text and promotions purchases that appear at the top of a results page in response to user queries.
Google sells search ads through automated auctions that take place less than a second after a person initiates a search. The Justice Department says Google changed its bidding rules to raise prices by up to 15%, while limiting the information marketers have about where their spending is going and making it harder for them to withdraw from certain advertising auctions.
“Google left advertisers in the dark about how search advertising worked and how their advertising dollars were being spent,” Dahlquist said. “Only a monopolist can make a product worse, and still make money,” he said.
In response, Google’s lead litigator, John Schmidtlein, argued that Google had increased search ad prices in tandem with improving the quality of its ads.
Mehta asked why Google wasn’t more transparent about some of the changes to its…
