Details of the discussions are expected to be released later this week after the judge overseeing the antitrust case against Google announced that he would make public testimony from DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg and an Apple executive, John Giannandrea, according to Bloomberg.
Judge Amit Mehta initially let Weinberg and Giannandrea testify about the negotiations behind closed doors. But on October 4, he decided the testimony was central to the case and should be made public. Some testimony about similar discussions between Microsoft and Apple has also not been made public.
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Apple and Google have asked that the testimony be kept confidential. Judge Mehta, however, said he had read the transcripts line by line and would release the executives’ comments without revealing trade secrets, such as the names of internal Apple projects or exact financial figures.
The US Justice Department has accused Google of paying billions of dollars to Apple and other companies to be the default search engine on web browsers and smartphones. These deals have made it impossible for other search engines like Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo to expand their user bases and compete with Google.
On October 2, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified in court and revealed the negotiations to convince Apple to replace Google with Bing on Safari. He shared that Microsoft was willing to lose billions of dollars if Apple agreed.
(According to Bloomberg)
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