Twenty-six individuals joined together to file a complaint against Google about its partnership with Apple. For them, the agreement aimed at making Google the search engine Safari’s default harms innovation and search quality. However, the justice system is currently not receptive to their approach.
In May, we will be able to follow the final arguments in the historic trial against Google. The company is being sued by the US Department of Justice for violating anti-monopoly law, using financial agreements, in order to make its search engine the default in many devices and browsers . But the institution is not the only one to pursue the Mountain View firm since a group of individuals has also decided to attack the company.
Search results impoverished by the Google-Apple agreement?
Twenty-six people therefore attacked Google and went to plead their case before the Californian courts. According to them, Google’s agreement with Apple (and Samsung), which concerns the presence of Google as the default search engine in Safari, has delayed innovation and deprived users of “thehe quality, service, and privacy they would otherwise have enjoyed without Google’s anticompetitive behavior “.
The complaint also states that the plaintiffs believe that consumers have fewer choices, that Google favors its advertisers, and therefore that this has caused a “ annoying and harmful distortion » search results.
In other words, Google would take advantage of this agreement to push its own interests and impoverish the quality of the results presented to users. Problem is, the plaintiffs seem to have pulled their arguments out of their hat, undermining the requests for reparations listed.
A lack of evidence that leaves a mark
In an order available online, District Judge Rita Lin for the moment dismissed the complaint, explaining that the plaintiffs had not presented enough evidence to support their action. Some statements were dismissed with prejudice, but others may still be amended.
The plaintiffs accuse Google of having forced Apple to stay out of the search engine market, or that secret meetings took place to define an opaque strategy. Clearly insufficient for the magistrate, who considers that the evidence provided is insufficient and that all of this could have been conducted in a commercial context. rational and legal “. The obscure photo showing Sundar Pichai met Tim Cook with a mysterious cardboard folder under the elbow » clearly did not help the plaintiffs, who were also dismissed on the idea that Google would have the habit of destroying evidence.
The latter do not in fact “ presented no specific factual allegations that the defendants did so in this case “. However, the plaintiffs have 30 days to modify certain so-called adequate allegations and add more solid evidence to their case. After this period, the complaint will be closed, without the possibility of modifying the declarations made.
You are being tracked. All. Yes, despite its fine speeches about security, Google is tracking you. Tirelessly. It’s an open secret that the majority of Google’s revenue is based on advertising. So to make it more relevant, it must be attractive and meet the specific needs of the Internet user. How to achieve this? Quite simply by multiplying the techniques to track the latter.
Read more
Source : Ars Technica
A historian who eventually fell into video games, I am passionate about these two fields as well as space, science in general, technology and sport. Dotted streamer, I have so many games to do that I had to create a spreadsheet. News editor for 6 years, I like to bring the news to readers.
Read other articles
1