Google, Apple, and the DuckDuckGo Trial: Cue, Apple or Mehta? Weinberg, Google or Google?

Cue was on the stand as a witness in US v. Google, the landmark antitrust trial over Google’s search business. The US Department of Justice is making a case against the search engine company because of a deal it has with Apple, which makes Apple pay billions of dollars a year to use a default search engine.

That question, whether Apple picked out the most lucrative option or the best option, was a key part of Cue’s testimony to the DOJ. The Justice Department is focused on the deals Google makes — with Apple but also with Samsung and Mozilla and many others — to ensure it is the default search engine on practically every platform.

The Justice Department referred to a number of over $10 billion paid to Apple annually, although the exact price is not known. Search engine makers argue that it is nearly impossible to build a loyal following that would rival it. “If you switch some of these defaults eventually you’re just going to be switched back to Google if you do nothing,” complained DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg in testimony.

Weinberg said that DuckDuckGo made a “quixotic” but fruitless effort to have its privacy-focused search engine implemented in browsers’ incognito mode and was stymied by the Google deals. Google, for its part, noted that DuckDuckGo has failed to get a boost from European laws that require users to pick a search engine — although Weinberg countered by claiming the choice screens were designed poorly.

Beyond the arguments made in court over Google’s search dominance, the US v. Google trial has been marked by a high level of secrecy around the company’s economic dealings. Judge Amit Mehta stated before the trial that he planned to be “conservative” with allowing potentially sensitive details to reach the public, saying, “I am not anyone that understands the industry and the markets in the way that you do, and so I take seriously when companies are telling me that if this gets disclosed, it’s going to cause competitive harm.” Mehta was angry because the Justice Department posted online copies of some exhibits that were not seen in public court sessions. A resolution to that dispute was expected last week but never reached — although it’s possible we’ll see news on that front Tuesday alongside Cue.

The man in the suit peered at the monitor in front of him. The screens in the DC courtroom had malfunctioned and left some witnesses with binders, but the tech was up and running and showed an image of three iPhones, each demonstrating a part of the phone’s setup process. squinted and looked at the screen

“The resolution on this is terrible,” he said. “You should get a Mac.” That got some laughs in an otherwise staid and quiet courtroom. Judge Amit Mehta, presiding over the case, leaned into his microphone and responded, “If Apple would like to make a donation…” That got even bigger laughs. Then everybody got back down to business.

Apple or Google? Bellshaw’s question on Google, Google, and the DoJ: How Apple feels about the privacy pop-ups?

As for the privacy pop-ups? This is where Bellshaw began to press on how exactly Apple decided Google had the best product. She asked Cue if Apple believes user privacy is important, to which he said, “Absolutely.” Then, she showed a series of emails and slides in which Cue and Apple railed against Google’s privacy policies. Just agreed. “We’ve always thought we had better privacy than Google,” he told Bellshaw. He said that one provision of the ISA with Google was that Google had to allow people to search without logging in and that Apple has done things in Safari and around its platforms to make it harder for Google or anyone else to track users.

The DOJ implied that Apple gives itself a central place in its platform because of how much money it makes from Google, even though the company believes in privacy more than it does. Bellshaw asked Cue to review some of Apple’s financial filings. Isn’t it true that the ISA represents a significant portion of Apple’s profits, she asked? He said that it isn’t what Apple thinks, because it doesn’t account for all of the work Apple did to make it so appealing as well as it does.

Bellshaw asked Cue a number of questions about the iPhone setup process. There are three screens on the Appearance screen, the location- tracking prompt, and the app tracking transparency that let’s you know when an app wants to collect your data. Cue objected to all these things being considered part of setup, but Bellshaw’s point was that Apple offers its users a choice about lots of things, big and small, and that search could be one of them.