Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Tuesday was summoned to federal court for the second time in two weeks to testify in an antitrust trial threatening to topple a pillar of an web empire that he helped construct.
In his newest courtroom look in San Francisco, Pichai spent greater than two hours defending the enterprise practices of the Google Play Retailer, which distributes apps for the corporate’s Android software program that powers a lot of the world’s smartphones.
At instances, the soft-spoken Pichai regarded nonplussed and annoyed by the confrontational questioning he confronted. Different instances he got here throughout as a professor explaining complicated topics to the trial’s 10-person jury positioned only a few toes from a podium Pichai was allowed to make use of as a result of he has problem sitting for extended intervals.
Epic Video games, the maker of the favored online game Fortnite, is attempting to persuade the jury {that a} Google Play fee processing system that collects a 15% to 30% fee from in-app purchases is illegally hurting shoppers and software program builders. Google collects these commissions, in accordance with Epic, by utilizing its market muscle to thwart competing Android app shops — a method that drives up costs and discourages innovation.
It echoes a earlier case that Epic introduced towards Apple, the iPhone maker that’s alternately being depicted as Google foe and ally on this trial.
Pichai’s newest testimony came 15 days after he traveled to Washington, D.C., to take the stand in a separate antitrust trial revolving around the Justice Department’s allegations that Google has stifled competitors and innovation by abusing the ability of the dominant search engine that launched the corporate in 1998.
Though the 2 trials are unfolding on reverse ends of the nation and are delving into totally different elements of an organization that buyers worth at $1.7 trillion, they’re touching upon no less than two frequent points — Google’s immense energy and its uncommon relationship with Apple, a fair greater tech powerhouse.
A key a part of Google’s protection towards that allegations that its Play Retailer is working an unlawful monopoly on Android apps hinges on the assertion that the corporate faces main competitors from Apple’s iPhone, cell working system and app retailer.
In the meantime, the Justice Division’s case towards Google in Washington is concentrated largely on offers that the corporate negotiated with Apple to make sure Google’s search engine routinely fields queries entered on iPhones and Apple’s Safari browser.
After Monday testimony from an skilled witness within the Washington antitrust trial revealed Google shared 36% of its advert income from Safari search queries with Apple in 2021, Pichai was pressured to verify the determine Tuesday in San Francisco below typically combative questioning by Epic lawyer Lauren Moskowitz.
Issues obtained so tense that earlier than recessing for a brief break, U.S. District Choose James Donato described the back-and-forth between Epic’s lawyer and Pichai as a “rocking 75 minutes.”
Earlier than the testimony started, Donato had granted Moskowitz’s request to reveal the exact amount of cash that Google paid Apple in 2021 over objections from each Google and Apple attorneys, however she by no means obtained that particular.
As an alternative, Moskowitz obtained Pichai to acknowledge that Apple acquired the majority of the $26.3 billion that Google paid for all of its 2021 deals that locked in its search engine as the automated handler of queries on smartphones and internet browsers. Analysts have estimated Apple’s annual take from Google to be within the vary of $15 billion to $20 billion.
Moskowitz additionally identified that Apple’s 36% lower from Google’s search advert income within the Safari browser was greater than twice the 16% charge paid to Samsung, the largest vendor of Android smartphones. That time appeared to be aimed toward portray Apple as one in all Google’s greatest enterprise companions, relatively than a serious competitor.
Though he typically appeared to be caught off stability by Moskowitz’s aggressive questioning, Pichai by no means wavered from his insistence that Google and Android compete “fiercely” with Apple and the iPhone — a rivalry he asserted has given shoppers extra selections and pushed down costs.
“We enable more affordable smartphones,” Pichai mentioned of Android, which Google provides away to Samsung and different smartphone producers without cost in alternate for placing the corporate’s search engine and different providers, equivalent to its Play Retailer, on the units. That, Pichai added, “is very different from what Apple does.”
Apple’s specter looms over the Play Retailer in different methods too, given Epic Video games already has misplaced in a similar 2021 trial that focused the fee system for the iPhone app retailer.
Though a federal judge sided with Apple on most fronts in that trial, the end result opened one potential crack within the digital fortress that the corporate has constructed across the iPhone.
The choose and an appeals court each decided Apple ought to enable apps to supply hyperlinks to different fee choices, a change that might undermine the commissions that each Apple and Google acquire on digital purchases made inside a cell app. Apple is interesting that a part of the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
Proof submitted throughout Pichai’s Tuesday testimony confirmed simply how profitable the Play Retailer has been for Google. In the course of the first half of 2020, as an illustration, the Play Retailer generated an working revenue of $4.4 billion.
Steered by questioning from a Google lawyer, Pichai identified that determine didn’t account for the billions of {dollars} that the corporate spends on the Android working system that ensures individuals produce other smartphone choices than the iPhone. He additionally identified that 97% of software program builders with apps in Google Play don’t pay any charges in any respect as a result of they both don’t promote digital items or don’t generate sufficient income to achieve the brink that triggers the commissions.
“The way we designed Google Play is we do well only when developers do well,” Pichai mentioned.
