Argument for Splitting Up Google Based on Four Clicks and a Swipe

Eddy Cue, one of Apple Inc.’s influential executives, took the witness stand on September 26 to provide a detailed explanation of the process that lies at the heart of the US government’s claim that Google is an unlawful monopoly. This process, which involves merely four taps and a swipe on an iPhone, allows users to switch search engines.

Presented with iPhone screenshots on a flat screen, Cue sounded like a Genius bar technician. “The Settings app is on the main screen by default when you buy a new phone,” he said. “When you tap on it in Settings, you get a list.” He continued: “You tap on Safari, and then there’s ‘search engine’. It would show you what the current search engine is that you’re using as the default. And then if you tap on that, you’ll get a list of options, and you can choose any of them.”

“Not a difficult process,” Cue said.

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Looked at another way, it’s a maze that most iPhone owners never bother to enter, unfairly extending Google’s lead over rivals like Microsoft Corp.’s Bing, driving search startups out of business and enriching Apple, which makes billions of dollars a year. to set Google as your default. Whether the court accepts Cue’s instructions are simple enough will help determine whether Google faces legal consequences that could extend to breaking up the company.

The trial, now about halfway through as Google begins formally presenting its defense on Thursday, is a shuddering fault line tearing at the tectonic plates of big tech. Most of the focus so far has been on quiet deal talks between the top brass in the trillion-dollar club, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. But the lawsuit also offers a rare and revealing look at the often invisible incentives for users that have shaped the way we interact with technology.

USA v. Google is the country’s biggest antitrust case since Microsoft in 1998. That lawsuit dealt with simpler allegations of anticompetitive behavior. Microsoft bundled its Internet Explorer browser with the dominant Windows operating system and pressured computer manufacturers and Internet service providers to adopt the application and cut off rival Netscape’s distribution. Netscape’s popular Navigator browser, which sold for $49 in the mid-1990s, was suddenly a hot sell when Internet Explorer came preinstalled on most new computers. Google’s case is more complicated because Google and most other search engines have long been free. The only real cost to switch, at least on the iPhone, is four taps and one swipe. So Google’s trial version is, in a sense, about app design.

Lawyers for the government and Google have heard at times over the past month about lawsuits such as user interface designers, and prosecutors have argued over the meaning of iconography, toggle buttons and drop-down menus. Although the government’s lawsuit broadly concerns the legality of bundling services at the expense of consumer choice, the case is symbolized by a small arrangement of pixels on a screen.

John Schmidtlein, Google’s general counsel, argued that the company’s products have won because they are simply better than what the competition is offering. He claimed that Google’s default bids were mainly based on merit, with users able to change settings in “seconds”.

Schmidtlein made his own introduction to Android, noting that the Google search widget can be removed from the home screen with one “long touch” and another quick tap. “It’s gone,” he said.

Still, testimony from Nadella and the founders of search firms DuckDuckGo and Neeva Inc. made a compelling case that the surrogate cannot credibly compete with the default company. Darin Fisher, who was responsible for designing Google’s Chrome web browser until early 2021, said in an interview that the power of defaults is “massive.” (Fisher, who worked at the briefly defunct Neeva, did not testify in court, although his former boss did.) “The more things that require clicking and the more scrolling and interface interaction, the more likely the user is not going to survive,” Fisher said. “It’s design 101.”

And the suggestion that Apple and Google design their systems to make it easy to change the default settings? “Oh my God,” said Fisher, “such bulls—.”

“Good user experience”

The origins of Google’s competition law problems date back to the mid-2000s. In the eternal hunt for online advertising dollars, executives are looking for ways to expand Google’s reach with its own software and partnerships with Apple and Firefox browser maker Mozilla. Negotiations over revenue sharing intensified as browser makers wondered how much Google was willing to pay for the default search engine.

Google has long presented itself as the master of customization and choice. The internal effort to remove presets represented a wrinkle in this design philosophy. Pichai, who led the development of Google’s Chrome web browser for years before becoming CEO, was particularly concerned about the privilege payment, according to emails released in the lawsuit. “We should encourage them to choose Yahoo from the drop-down menu or some other easy option,” Pichai wrote to colleagues in 2007. “I don’t think that’s a good user experience, and the optics aren’t good for us. the only provider in the browser.”

Google’s lawyers argued that the default settings aren’t that effective, however, citing examples of search distribution deals Microsoft struck with BlackBerry, Nokia and Verizon that failed to move Bing’s needle. People often went through steps to switch to Google.

Still, the inside information revolutionizes the story. A 2007 Google study disclosed in court showed that when users changed their browser homepage to a non-Google website, searches decreased by 27%. The Department of Justice claimed that 50 percent of all searches in the United States come through Google’s default purchases.

Prosecutors went to great lengths to highlight how Google’s dominance has hurt a generation of search companies, including Neeva and DuckDuckGo, but it’s another trillion-dollar company, Microsoft, that is likely to benefit the most from the government’s victory in court. Which explains why its CEO was such a strong witness for the government’s case.

In his testimony, Nadella suggested that if the Technology Industry continues down this path of paid software placements, it could have profound consequences for AI innovation and whatever comes next. He claimed that Bing’s own attempts to pay for defaults failed because Microsoft was too late. Habits were hard to break after Google reached a 97 percent market share in the mobile market: “You get up, brush your teeth, and search on Google,” Nadella said.

Nadella was not completely against the omissions. After all, Microsoft uses a similar system to promote its own software. But Nadella accused Google of deploying its defaults to unfairly hurt other companies. He gave the example of removing Google’s app store if phone manufacturers don’t make Chrome the default browser on their Android devices. “It’s impossible to beat something like this,” Nadella said. “Google has carrots, and it has massive sticks.”

It’s worth remembering that Microsoft was effectively exploiting its dominance in the same way that Nadella accused Google of doing, said Tom Evslin, Microsoft’s former chief product officer in the early 1990s. If Microsoft hadn’t lost its grip on the browser and mobile markets over the next few decades, it might still be following the same practices. “To complain about Microsoft just because it’s lost for a while seems a little hypocritical,” Evslin said in an interview.

Schadenfreude is perhaps the more likely motivation for Nadella’s testimony. Prosecutors have said the case is just like a Microsoft antitrust trial from the dot-com era, while Google’s Schmidtlein has argued that “the facts could not be more contradictory.” But certain similarities between the lawsuits are striking. An internal Microsoft study from 1997 concluded that to beat Internet Explorer, Netscape needed to be bundled with Windows. Back then, under Bill Gates, Microsoft had a huge Windows stick and was willing to use it on PC manufacturers and software developers to benefit Internet Explorer.

Microsoft had considered making AOL the default on Windows in exchange for AOL switching browsers to Internet Explorer, a bid to steal Netscape’s 30-40 percent market share through the web portal. In a separate negotiation, Microsoft had told AT&T that it would consider adding a login program to the telecommunications service only if AT&T gave Internet Explorer an exclusive or highly preferential treatment and revenue-sharing agreement.

Microsoft eventually lost the antitrust lawsuit, but after an appeal, the company initially settled with the Department of Justice. The agreement required it, in part, to allow Windows to disable Internet Explorer.

Nadella used his testimony this month not only to stick it to Google, but also to shine a light on Apple, which has pinned U.S. antitrust scrutiny on its iOS mobile operating system and app store. “Would Google even exist if Windows had iOS-like restrictions on the distribution of things?” Nadella said.

At another point, Nadella wondered why Google spent billions of dollars on default payments if the company really believed its search engine could win without them: “The question then is: Why does Google have to pay Apple?”

Apple defended its practice of selling the default placement to Google, arguing that it’s “pretty easy” to change, as Cue claimed in a statement, and that it actually makes Apple’s products better. Cue, Apple’s chief service officer, argued in court that it was the quality of Google’s search — not the $4 billion to $7 billion it pays Apple annually — that secured its place on the iPhone.

Cue talked about the sanctity of design at Apple and said he was not aware of any cases where Google restricted Apple’s ability to create its own user interface. However, several obvious examples to the contrary emerged in court. In one, a Google executive testified that the company complained about a visual change Apple made to the iPhone search box in 2013. “They shrunk the box where you type a query and turned it gray,” said Joan Braddi, Google’s vice president. director of product partnerships. “We saw a dramatic drop in usage, and we told them about their interface changes, and they asked us for recommendations on how to fix it.” In another case, Apple considered offering users alternative default settings for search engines in its now-defunct Windows version of Safari if they download it from a third-party service like Yahoo or AOL. However, Apple dropped the idea after Google protested, according to Cue.

Apple’s design philosophy is somewhat anti-choice. “The more choices or options you get, it frustrates customers,” Cue said. “They are afraid of making the wrong choice.” This is evident throughout Apple’s mobile software, where users are not even given the option to change their default voice assistant from Siri to Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa or their navigation software to Google Maps.

Microsoft today offers plenty of choice in Windows, but still chooses a software package when it suits the company’s business interests. In response to overwhelming demand for the AI chatbot, in February Microsoft made the product an early preview only for users of its Edge browser and Bing.

When Google’s lawyers begin presenting their cases this week, they will likely highlight consumer choices in Google’s own software and how easy it is to switch search engines on other platforms. Pichai is expected to testify about this in the coming weeks. A Google spokesperson reiterated in an emailed statement that default settings are easy to change on browsers and mobile devices. “On Windows PCs – where Bing is the default and Microsoft makes it much harder to switch – the majority of people still search on Google,” the spokesperson said. “And if people have trouble changing their settings, they can always easily look up how to do it on their preferred search engine.”

For a telling example of big tech’s design philosophy, consider printers. Apple, Google, and Microsoft do not make printers and have no profit in them. Each company’s operating system print screens have no default manufacturer or secret revenue-sharing agreements for ink cartridge sales. Rather, when you go to print something, there’s a list of options for HP or Epson or whatever product is plugged in. Pretty easy, right?

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