Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft (MSFT.O), testified on Monday in the once-in-a-generation antitrust battle between the U.S. Justice Department and Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O).
Microsoft, a software giant in its own right, reportedly tried to get its Bing search engine set as the default on Apple (AAPL.O) devices but was rejected, according to Nadella.
A Google claim that it is simple to adjust a device’s default settings was deemed “bogus” by Nadella.
The easiest defaults to change nowadays are on Windows, whereas mobile devices are the most difficult.
The government claims that Google, which is valued more than $1 trillion and controls 90% of the search industry, illegally pays $10 billion yearly to wireless carriers like AT&T (T.N) and smartphone manufacturers like Apple to be the default search engine on their devices. Google’s earnings are increased because of its dominance in the competitive advertising sector.
Google has made an effort to demonstrate that its success is not the result of criminal activity but rather the high caliber of its goods.
Long after Microsoft had been the target of its own federal antitrust litigation, Nadella was named CEO in 2014. This legal battle, which started in 1998 and culminated in a settlement in 2001, caused Microsoft to change some of its business methods and made room for firms like Google.
The two developed a fierce rivalry as Google, which was formed in 1998 and is now the largest search engine in the market. Both use similar email services, search engines, and browsers, among many other things. They have lately developed rivalry in the field of artificial intelligence, with Google investing extensively on the Bard AI chatbot and Microsoft making significant expenditures in OpenAI.
