A new revelation concerning the agreement between Samsung and Google could well weaken the defense of the Web giant in the context of its trial for abuse of dominant position.
The web giant’s lawyers are currently embroiled in the most important lawsuit Google has ever faced against the US Department of Justice. This accuses the company of abuse of a dominant position, and particularly points to its agreement with different brands of smartphones around the question of the default search engine on each new model.
For its part, Google pleads good faith, explaining that these are classic partnerships and which in no way prevent free competition. But the Wall Street Journal recently revealed information that may well weaken this argument, and could force the company to review its defense.
Reminder of the Google lawsuit
Three weeks ago, a historic trial opened in Washington that pits Google against the American government. The latter accuses the digital giant of abuse of a dominant position having prevented free competition from developing. And in the Department of Justice’s sights are the various agreements made with smartphone manufacturers so that Google is the default search engine for new models.
Google does not hide the fact of having entered into this type of agreement, but disputes the illegality of the approach, considering these agreements as classic commercial partnerships. And his defense is based above all on the idea that “ the competition is just one click away “. These simple “partnerships” however seem extremely important in the eyes of Google: the one with Apple cost no less than 19 billion dollars for the year 2023 alone. For Google’s competitors, this trial is also a very good opportunity to settle accounts with the American giant. And the good faith of the company could be called into question by information from Wall Street Journal.
The competition may be more than a click away after all
In the investigation published on September 26, the newspaper shows that the agreements made by Google went further than the simple default designation of its search engine. Indeed, while the company had this type of agreement with Samsung, the Korean manufacturer would have flirted for a while with the idea of switching to Bing, when it began to integrate ChatGPT. And if the manufacturer finally abandoned the idea, it nevertheless wanted to make it easier for its users to change search engines.
An unacceptable decision for Google, which would have considered that such a change violated the terms of the agreement and threatened Samsung with heavy sanctions followed by a trial. The Korean company eventually backed down. Obviously, such a revelation complicates the situation for Google, which can hardly continue to assert that it does not engage in anti-competitive practices.
Ultimately, the two companies ended up in court… but not necessarily in the position that Google would have preferred.
Sources: WSJ, SamMobile
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