Google’s executive director, Like Pichai, said a federal judge on Wednesday that a government proposal to break the company would take the business, since it intended to avoid drastic changes to fix an illegal monopoly in the online search.
Judge Amit P. Mehta, of the United States District Court for the Columbia district, ruled last year that Google had the law to maintain a search monopoly. This month, he convened an audience to decide the measures, known as Remedios, which would be established to address illegal behavior.
As the company’s second witness, Mr. Pichai was called to present the case that the court should be the aggressive solutions of the government, including Google’s obligation to sell its popular Chrome web browser and share data with rivals. Pichai said that the government’s proposal would lead the company to make less investments in new technologies if necessary to share the benefits with its competitors for a minimal fairy.
“I think that the combination of all remedies makes it viable to invest in R&D as we have done during the last three decades, to continue innovating and building the search for Google,” he said, referring to research and development.
Mr. Pichai is the highest profile witness who is expected to testify at the historic three -week audience, which could rebalance the dynamics of power in Silicon Valley. The technology industry is locked in a career to develop internet products driven by artificial intelligence, and new restrictions in Google’s business could overcome the efforts of its rivals and hinder their own.
Google’s search is also the first important test of US government efforts to restrict the great power of technological giants on trade, communications and online information. A federal judge in Virginia ruled this month that Google was also monopoly in some online advertising technologies.
The Federal Commerce Commission is blocking with a task on whether its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions illegally turned off the nascent competitors. Additional federal antimonopoly demands against Apple and Amazon are expected to trial in the coming years.
The Department of Justice filed its demand for Google in 2020, during the first mandate of President Trump.
Government lawyers argued the duration of a 2023 trial that Google had blocked other search engines when paying companies such as Apple, Samsung and Mozilla to be the search engine that automatically appears in web browsers and smartphones. The company paid $ 26.3 billion as part of those agreements in 2021, according to the testimony at that time.
Judge Mehta ruled against the company in August. Last week, he opened the three -week audience to determine the remedies.
The proposal of the Department of Justice is a wide ranking. The government argues that Google needs to sell Chrome because it automatically sends user consultations to the company’s search engine.
In the testimony of Mr. Pichai, which lasted approximately 90 minutes, said that the company had invested heavy in Chrome and that it was better located to ensure that the application was protected from cyber attacks. Mr. Pichai, who helped develop Chrome, bristled when a government lawyer questioned if he could predict how a future owner of the browser would handle cyber security.
“Given my deep knowledge of space and a general understanding of what the capacities and commitments of other companies are around web security, I think I can talk about it,” he said.
The government also wants Google to share its search results with rivals. According to the proposal, other search engines could get access to data on the searches that Google users were doing and the websites they were clicking on.
Mr. Pichai described the exchange of forced data required by the proposal “de facto divestment” of the company’s intellectual property that “would allow anyone to completely reverse engineering, at the end at the end, all aspects of our technology battery.”
Google’s proposal is closer. He said that he should allow to continue paying other companies for his search engine to obtain a privileged placement. But he also said that some of these agreements should be available for renegotiation every year, and that smartphone manufacturers should have more freedom when deciding what Google applications install on their devices.
Judge Mehta asked Mr. Pichai how other search engines could compete with Google if the company could still pay for its own search product to obtain a main placement.
“I can barely think of exceptions to ‘The best product wins’,” Pichai added later.
