Antitrust: Google's dominance is challenged in court

The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web

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The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web:

The Justice Department's landmark suit against Google probes an "unlikely union" with Apple that's 15 years in the making, said Daisuke Wakabayashi and Jack Nicas at The New York Times. Attorney General William Barr's agency had numerous ways to advance its antitrust argument against Big Tech. It chose to home in on the alliance between two behemoths, Apple and Google, as "a prime example of Google's illegal tactics to protect its monopoly." Google's placement as the default search engine on Apple's iPhones — not just on the Safari browser but on "virtually all searches on Apple devices" — "has rarely been discussed by either company." But according to the DOJ, Google pays Apple between $8 billion and $12 billion annually to put Google search at "the center of consumers' online lives." The arrangement, prosecutors argue, throttles competition and innovation and forces advertisers to align with Google's "search domination." Apple might not emerge unscathed, either, said Tim Higgins at The Wall Street Journal. "Google's payments account for up to a fifth of the iPhone maker's overall profit." In return, the agreement gives Google more than a third of all its U.S. search traffic.

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