CEO Pichai defends paying Apple and others to make Google default search engine

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has given evidence in the biggest US antitrust case in a quarter of a century, defending his company’s practice of paying Apple and other tech companies to make Google the default search engine on their devices.

Mr Pichai said the intent was to make the user experience “seamless and easy”.

The US Department of Justice contends that Google – a company whose very name is synonymous with scouring the internet – pays off tech companies to lock out rival search engines to smother competition and innovation.

According to court documents the government entered into the record last week, the payments came to more than 26 billion dollars (£21.4 billion) in 2021, a year in which operating expenses for Google’s parent company Alphabet were nearly 68 billion dollars (£55.9 billion).

“We are working very, very hard for any given query we provide the best experience,” Mr Pichai said.

“That’s always been our true north.”

Born in India, Mr Pichai joined Google in 2004 from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

Before becoming chief executive, he helped develop Google Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser, and was named to the company’s top job in 2015.

He is also chief executive of Google’s parent company Alphabet.

Under his leadership, the company’s net income ballooned to 60 billion dollars (£49.3 billion) last year from 19.5 billion dollars (£16 billion) in 2016, the first full year of Alphabet’s operation.

As Google’s star defence witness, Mr Pichai said on Monday that Google’s payments to phone manufacturers and wireless phone companies were partly meant to nudge them into making costly security upgrades and other improvements to their devices, not just to ensure Google was the first search engine users encounter when they open their smartphones or computers.

Google benefits from the deals because it makes money when users click on advertisements that pop up in its searches and shares the revenue with Apple and other companies that make Google their default search engine.

The Justice Department sought to show that Google feared Apple might establish its own search engine and worried about losing talent to Apple.

In a 2019 email shown in court, Mr Pichai asked to be informed directly whenever a member of Google’s search engine team defected to Apple.

The antitrust case, the biggest since the Justice Department went after Microsoft and its dominance of internet browsers 25 years ago, was filed in 2020 during the Trump administration.

The trial began on September 12 in US District Court in Washington DC and is expected to run for 10 weeks.

Much of the evidence in the case has been held behind closed doors, and a significant amount of evidence has been redacted from documents at the request of Google and Apple, whose lawyers say they need to protect trade secrets.

US District Judge Amit Mehta is unlikely to issue a ruling until early next year.

If he decides Google broke the law, another trial will determine how to rein in its market power.

The company, based in Mountain View, California, could be stopped from paying Apple and other companies to make Google the default search engine.

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella testified earlier that Google has an almost hypnotic hold on users.

“You get up in the morning, you brush your teeth and you search on Google,” Mr Nadella said.

The only way to break the habit is by changing the default choice on devices, he said.