Alphabet’s Google proposed Friday that its agreement with Apple and others has relaxed, setting Google as the default search engine on new devices to resolve the U.S. ruling that it illegally dominated online searches.
The proposal is much narrower than the government’s efforts to push Google to sell its Chrome browser, which Google says is a massive attempt to intervene in the search market.
Google urged U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta to exercise caution in Washington to decide what the company must do to resume competition after it ruled that the company held an illegal monopoly in online searches and related advertising. Google said in court documents that the court had informed no antitrust remedies.
This is especially true, Google says: “This is especially true in an environment where outstanding AI innovation is rapidly changing people’s interactions with many online products and services, including search engines.”
While Google plans to file a ruling at the end of the case, it says the upcoming “remedial measures” phase should focus on distribution agreements with browser developers, mobile device manufacturers and wireless carriers.
The judge found that the agreement made Google a “largely invisible advantage over competitors” and resulted in most devices in the United States being pre-installed with Google’s search engine.
The judge said the agreements were difficult to exit, especially for Android manufacturers, who had to agree to install Google Search in order to include Google’s Play Store on their devices.
To solve this problem, Google can make them non-exclusive, for Android phone manufacturers, unintersect their Play Store from Chrome and Search, and said in their proposal.
Google will allow browser developers who agree to set their search engines to revisit the default settings of that decision in proposals every year.
Income Sharing
Unlike the government’s proposal, Google’s revenue sharing agreement will not end the revenue sharing agreement, which passes a portion of Google’s advertising revenue from searches to devices and software companies, using it as the default search engine.
The independent browser developers who make Firefox say the funds are crucial to their operations. In 2022 alone, Apple received about $20 billion in revenue from its agreement with Google.
Kamyl Bazbaz, a spokesman for search engine competitor Duckduckgo, said the proposal attempts to maintain the status quo.
“Once the court finds a violation of competition law, remedies must not only prevent illegal acts and prevent them from recurring, but also restore competition in the affected markets,” he said.
Google’s proposal sets the stage for the trial of Mehta, which will be held in April, and the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Alliance will seek to demonstrate demand for a broad range of remedies, including making Google sell Chrome and Chrome and Chrome and Android mobile operating systems .
According to court documents, the government plans to convene witnesses from OpenAI, AI search startup confusion and Microsoft.
Prosecutors also want Google to stop payments as the default search engine and stop investing in search competitors and query-based AI products, and license their search results and technology to competitors.
The proposals are designed to stimulate innovation in online search, and Mehta found that Google’s overwhelming market share prevented competitors from collecting the search data needed to improve their products and prevented Google from expanding its advantages into AI.
©Thomson Reuters 2024
(This story has not been edited by Tech Word News’s staff and is automatically generated from the joint feed.)
