WASHINGTON – Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said Monday that Google’s unfair tactics have led to its dominance as a search engine, tactics that have frustrated his company’s software rival Bing.
Nadella testified before a packed courtroom in Washington, DC, as part of the government’s landmark antitrust case against Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The Justice Department alleged that Google abused its ubiquitous search engine dominance to stifle competition and innovation at the expense of consumers. The claims echo similar lawsuits brought against Microsoft in the late 1990s.
Nadella said Google’s dominance was due to contracts that made Google the default browser on smartphones and computers. He downplays the significance of the idea that artificial intelligence or specialized search engines like Amazon or social networks have significantly changed the market in which Microsoft competes with Google.
Nadella said users have little choice when switching from the default web browser on mobile phones and computers.
“We’re one of the options, but we’re not the standard,” he said.
John Schmidtlin, Google’s chief prosecutor, questioned Nadella about cases where users switched from Bing to Google even though Microsoft’s search engine was the default on their devices — and argued that Microsoft made mistakes with Bing that prevented it from doing so. Compete with Google.
When asked, Nadella denied that Bing’s introduction of artificial intelligence had led to a radical shift in its market share. According to Google, artificial intelligence programs such as chatbots have increased competition in the search engine market.
“Even the App Store downloads are interesting, but they’re nothing special,” Nadella said of Microsoft’s revamped, AI-powered search engine.
Nadella was called to the witness stand as the largest US antitrust trial of the past quarter century entered its fourth week of testimony before US District Judge Amit Mehta, who is not expected to rule on the case until next year.
The Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google focuses on the company’s agreements with Apple and other device makers to use Google’s search engine.
In the 1990s, Microsoft was accused of structuring its Windows software in a way that isolated applications from other technology companies, just as Google now faces accusations of spending billions of dollars each year to block its search engine as its primary search engine. A place to find information online on smartphones and web browsers.
Ironically, the restrictions and confusion imposed by the government’s antitrust suit against Microsoft served as a springboard for Google to turn its search engine into a dominant force. By the time Microsoft started building its own search engine, Google had already become synonymous with finding things on the Internet.
Still, Microsoft spent billions of dollars to seriously challenge Google with Bing and at one point tried to buy Yahoo for more than $40 billion. However, the offer was rejected while Steve Ballmer was still CEO of the software maker.
Nadella, who worked at Microsoft during the antitrust standoff with the Justice Department in the late 1990s, succeeded Ballmer as CEO in 2014. During his tenure, he led Microsoft to huge gains in personal and cloud computing, causing the company’s stock price to rise nearly nine percent. Since taking over, he has multiplied while building shareholder wealth of over $2 trillion.
Despite all these successes, it has not been able to make any significant headway over Google in search, with Bing still occupying a distant second place in the market.
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Associated Press writer Michael Liedtke of San Ramon, Calif. contributed to the report.
