Google gives a glimpse of its defence in once-in-a-generation antitrust trial

Google gave a glimpse of a main leg of its defence in court, through data showing that users happily stick with its search engine.

Search and advertising giant Google gave a glimpse of a main leg of its defence in court on Thursday, through data showing that users happily stick with its search engine when pre-installed on their devices and quickly switch from Bing or others they like less.

The Justice Department is arguing in a trial that began on Tuesday, alleging that the Alphabet unit sought agreements with mobile carriers to win powerful default positions on smartphones to dominate search. The government argues that this antitrust trial, the biggest in decades, will determine the future of the internet.

The government wrapped up questioning of Antonio Rangel, who teaches behavioral biology at the California Institute of Technology, on Thursday. Rangel argued that consumers were likely to stick with browsers on computers and mobile phones that were pre-installed as the default application.

The government says Google paid $10 billion annually to wireless companies like AT&T, device makers like Apple and browser makers like Mozilla to be the default search engine to fend off rivals and keep its market share near 90%.

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John Schmidtlein, a lawyer for Google, during cross-examination of Rangel, pointed to instances where a significant number of user search queries went to Google even when another search engine was the default.

Schmidtlein also showed an internal Microsoft document from several years ago about search use by people who carried a BlackBerry, an early smart device. Verizon BlackBerries had Bing as the default, AT&T and T-Mobile BlackBerries had Yahoo, while Sprint had Google as the default, the document showed.