Google Payment Expert To Apple And Cellular Operators Not Monopoly Abuse

The billions of dollars paid by Alphabet parent company Google to Apple, mobile operators, and other parties is normal and not monopolistic competitive behavior. This was said by an expert presented by Google in a very important antitrust hearing on Monday, November 13.

In the trial last week, Kevin Murphy, who teaches at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, argues that Apple and other parties are playing Google and Microsoft, which have a Bing search engine, are on each other to win big payments from Google.

The government, which has filed four major antitrust lawsuits against three Big Tech companies since 2020, accuses Google of paying billions of dollars - 26.3 billion US dollars (Rp412.4 trillion) in 2021 - to ensure that its search engine becomes the default on smartphones and browsers and to keep its market share high. The government argues that the payments constitute monopoly abuse.

"Perbayar yang dilakukan Google memenangkan adanya persaingan," ujar Murphy.

Murphy also argues that payments to device makers and other parties are often forwarded to users in the form of cheaper phones or better data packages.

In addition, Murphy argues that although Microsoft has almost all the default browser installed in the early 2010s, its Bing search engine only gets 15% of search requests.

He said that there were "a number of truth" in the argument that changing the default on the device might be complex for some people, but the same people often overcome these difficulties by turning to other browsers or other ways to solve the problem.