By Jody Godoy
(Reuters) -Google CEO Sundar Pichai is expected to take the stand on Wednesday morning at a trial in Washington where antitrust enforcers seek an order forcing the company to sell its Chrome web browser and take other measures to boost competition among online search providers.
Pichai will testify in the Alphabet unit’s defense against proposals by the U.S. Department of Justice that the company has said would cause unintended harm to browser developers, smartphone makers and internet users.
The outcome of the case could fundamentally reshape the internet by potentially unseating Google as the go-to portal for information online.
The DOJ and a broad coalition of state attorneys general are pressing for remedies to restore competition even as search evolves to overlap with generative AI products such as ChatGPT. Prosecutors are concerned that Google’s dominance in search could extend to AI.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled last year that Google, the site and app where most U.S. internet users search for information, “has no true competitor.” Google maintained its monopoly in part by paying billions of dollars to companies including Apple, Samsung, AT&T and Verizon to be the default search engine on new mobile devices, the judge said.
The DOJ wants the judge to end those payments and require Google to share search data with competitors.
Google has said the proposals would give away its hard work, and jeopardize its users’ privacy and endanger smaller companies like Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox browser, that rely on Google for revenue.
The company recently loosened its agreements to allow device makers and carriers to pre-install other search and AI apps, according to evidence shown at trial. Google has said it plans to appeal once the judge makes a final ruling.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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