Two weeks in the past, Google had a giant day in Washington. President Biden signed an govt order to create synthetic intelligence safeguards that would have an effect on Google’s most urgent initiatives, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken gave the corporate an award for its work in aiding Ukrainian refugees and selling ladies’s financial safety.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief govt, had spent a lot of the day on a witness stand at a federal courthouse about two miles from the White Home, defending his firm from claims that it crushed rivals within the search and internet marketing markets.
On Tuesday, Mr. Pichai testified once more, this time in San Francisco, to confront claims introduced by the online game firm Epic Video games that his firm broke the regulation, wielding monopolistic energy over app builders on Android’s Google Play Retailer.
Mr. Pichai over the past month has turn into the face of Google’s antitrust court docket fights on either side of the nation. And his visits to the witness stand underscore the rising significance for Massive Tech leaders to be sharp witnesses for his or her firms, whether or not in an antitrust trial or in hearings on Capitol Hill.
Testifying beneath oath is a process that many tech chief executives could be requested to do within the coming years, with Amazon, Meta and others dealing with their very own antitrust court docket fights. It isn’t a process at which many executives have excelled.
Although he was by no means referred to as to the witness stand to testify, Invoice Gates, who was chief govt of Microsoft within the last big technology antitrust case introduced by the Justice Division greater than 20 years in the past, got here throughout as combative and evasive in depositions.
Over the previous couple of years, executives together with Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman (and, in fact, Mr. Pichai) have been requested to testify earlier than Congress for varied causes, with various levels of success. Mr. Zuckerberg has at times exasperated lawmakers with obscure responses, whereas Mr. Altman appeared to charm senators in a listening to this yr.
The primary responsibility on the witness stand for Mr. Pichai — a low-key and detail-focused govt — has been to maintain the temperature low beneath questioning and hold to the central level of Google’s antitrust protection: that it’s an progressive firm that has maintained its management by means of innovation and onerous work as a substitute of unlawful monopolistic conduct.
On Tuesday, Mr. Pichai bumped into aggressive questioning by a lawyer for Epic, Lauren Moskowitz, who requested him to supply yes-or-no responses.
That led to a minimum of one small revelation: Mr. Pichai confirmed that his firm gave Apple 36 percent of the search income generated on iPhones, and stated the overall cost “was effectively over $10 billion” final yr. Ms. Moskowitz asserted that the determine was at least $18 billion.
Legal professionals for Google and Apple fought on Tuesday morning to maintain the figures hid, emphasizing a necessity for company privateness that has carried by means of each of Google’s trials. Decide James Donato rejected their requests, saying, “Simply coming in and saying we’re form of delicate with this isn’t going to fly.”
Ms. Moskowitz was attempting to counter Google’s declare that it can’t be thought-about a monopoly due to its rivalry with Apple. If that had been the case, she argued, why did it give Apple preferential therapy over different firms like Samsung, which she stated obtained a 16 p.c share of the search income from its units?
“We compete fiercely with Apple, on the working system, the smartphone and the app retailer stage,” Mr. Pichai stated later, when questioned by a Google lawyer. “The competitors has been good for customers and builders.”
The Justice Division filed its landmark antitrust go well with towards Google in October 2020, arguing that the corporate’s default-search offers with telephone makers and browser firms helped it illegally preserve a monopoly.
Google referred to as Mr. Pichai, 51, to the stand two weeks in the past. Moderately than sit within the witness field, Mr. Pichai stood at a lectern for nearly 4 hours, sporting a microphone, as if he had been delivering a speech at a company convention. His handlers stated he needed to stand due to a sprained decrease again.
He spoke of his background, getting a phone as a preteen in Chennai, India, and understanding then the ability of know-how, earlier than he deftly answered questions on his firm’s aggressive standing, relationship with Apple and the default-search contracts the federal government argues had been unlawful.
Mr. Pichai tried to refute the federal government lawyer’s arguments that Google paid Apple billions of {dollars} a yr to maintain it out of the search market. He offered a special story, saying his firm wished to be the iPhone’s default search engine due to the “worth” of that spot, and the necessity to guarantee Apple would safeguard the person expertise.
“I felt the deal had executed effectively since 2016,” Mr. Pichai stated. “It was persevering with to extend search utilization, search income.”
In cross-examination, Mr. Pichai repeated the rationale for the deal so many occasions that for a second, he appeared to lose endurance with the road of questioning, saying, “I simply gave all the explanations” for the deal.
Adam Kovacevich, a tech business lobbyist on the Chamber of Progress who spent 12 years working at Google, stated Mr. Pichai’s testimony gave the court docket a high-level view of how the corporate made strategic choices.
“He did nice,” Mr. Kovacevich stated of Mr. Pichai’s efficiency. “The largest factor to me is if you’re in that place, your first goal is to not be Invoice Gates within the Microsoft trial. Your No. 1 goal is to come back off as responsive and cheap.”
Excerpts from Mr. Gates’s combative, videotaped testimony had been proven in court docket greater than 20 years in the past. The Microsoft co-founder, antitrust attorneys say, undermined his and his company’s credibility with the decide within the case.
In San Francisco, Mr. Pichai was questioned on matters starting from why he erroneously marked emails as topic to attorney-client privilege (to forestall them from being forwarded) as to whether Fb and Amazon might have supplied competitors to Google’s Play Retailer once they had smartphone ambitions.
“There are nuances in these questions,” he stated with a smile when Ms. Moskowitz began to talk over him. “I’m attempting to reply your query.”
A number of occasions, Decide Donato requested Ms. Moskowitz to “be quiet” to let Mr. Pichai converse.
There can be one huge distinction between the lawsuits: The antitrust trial in Washington doesn’t have a jury. The choice can be made by a decide. In San Francisco, Mr. Pichai needed to enchantment to a nine-person jury that could possibly be open to the concept an enormous tech firm is exploiting a lot smaller outfits. Tim Sweeney, Epic’s chief govt, can be anticipated to testify within the trial.
Google and Epic declined to remark.
Epic, the maker of the hit recreation Fortnite, introduced the declare towards Google in 2020, in an try to sidestep the 15 to 30 p.c charges from subscriptions and in-app purchases that it should pay Google.
The sport developer antagonized Google and Apple by telling customers to pay for in-app transactions straight by means of Epic. In response, Google and Apple suspended Fortnite from their app shops. Epic claims Google additionally bullied different firms to drive them to drop offers with Epic earlier than it was banned from the app shops.
Google faces one other Justice Division antitrust lawsuit that accuses it of illegally abusing its monopoly energy over the know-how that delivers advertisements on-line.
A trial in that case might start as quickly as subsequent yr, however it’s too early to know whether or not Mr. Pichai can be referred to as to testify.
Mr. Pichai has tried to forestall Google staff from being distracted by the litigation. He has inspired them to “keep doing what you’re doing” and has allotted a comparatively small variety of staff to work on the Justice Division case — tons of out of greater than 180,000.
However Mr. Pichai’s court docket appearances have taken time away from his different obligations as an organization chief, together with his plan to reclaim Google’s primacy within the fast-growing subject of generative A.I.
In the midst of Mr. Pichai’s October testimony, the secretary of state, Mr. Blinken, was honoring Google’s subsidiary in Poland for its work in fostering ladies’s financial safety and serving to Ukrainian refugees. Hours later, Mr. Biden hosted a signing ceremony on the White Home, however Mr. Pichai’s handlers couldn’t R.S.V.P. sure as a result of there was an opportunity he might need nonetheless been in court docket when it started.
“It’s not one of the best use of his time,” Richard Kramer, an analyst at Arete Analysis, a London-based funding analysis agency, stated in an interview. “No C.E.O. needs to spend their time being grilled by authorities attorneys.”
