Google Search VP Defends Practices As Antitrust Trial Progresses

In the high-stakes antitrust trial brought against it by the U.S. Justice Department and 38 states, Google continues to argue that innovation and search quality, not anticompetitive practices, explain its dominance in internet search. Nayak, a vice president for search at Google since 2004, detailed the company’s “vast effort” to ensure its search results are high quality, according to Reuters. Those witnesses claimed Google maintains its search dominance partly through exclusive contracts with smartphone makers and wireless carriers worth billions of dollars that set Google as the default search engine. Nayak revealed that Google actively benchmarks the quality of its search results against competitors like Microsoft’s Bing. He stated that Google found its search results to be superior in testing.