Mr. Nadella - witness in the antitrust trial on October 2 in Washington. The Justice Department accused Google of abusing its search engine dominance to stifle competition and innovation, harming users. It is quite similar to the case against Microsoft in the late 1990s.
According to Mr. Nadella, Google's dominance is due to agreements that make Google the default browser on smartphones and computers. He believes that users basically do not have many options to switch away from the default browsers on their devices.
“We are one of the alternatives but not the default,” said the Microsoft CEO.
Google’s general counsel, John Schmidtlein, questioned Mr Nadella about instances where users switched from Bing to Google, even when Microsoft’s search engine was the default on their devices. He argued that Microsoft had made mistakes with Bing that made it impossible for it to compete with Google.
Mr. Nadella denied that Bing's use of artificial intelligence (AI) had led to significant changes in search market share. In response, Google asserted that AI programs like the ChatGPT chatbot increased competition in the search engine market.
The head of Microsoft was called as a witness as the biggest US antitrust trial in a quarter century entered its fourth week.
Judge Amit Mehta is expected to rule next year. The case between the Justice Department and Google centers on the deals Google struck with Apple and other device makers to use Google's search engine.
In the 1990s, Microsoft faced accusations that it had configured its Windows operating system in various ways to block applications from other technology companies, similar to how Google was accused of spending billions of dollars each year to block rivals in the search engine war.
The antitrust case between the government and Microsoft was the springboard for Google to turn its search engine into a dominant force. By the time the Windows maker began developing its own engine, the Google name was already synonymous with Internet search.
However, Microsoft did not hesitate to spend a lot of money to challenge Google with Bing, even trying to buy Yahoo for 40 billion USD when Steve Ballmer was still CEO.
Nadella succeeded Ballmer in 2014. During his tenure, he led Microsoft to huge successes in personal computing and the cloud, which saw the company's stock increase ninefold. Despite these successes, he failed to compete with Google, with Bing coming in a distant second.
(According to ABCNews)
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