In the ongoing legal battle over Google’s default search engine status, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta questioned the U.S. Department of Justice’s assertions that altering the playing field would result in rivals gaining more users.
The pivotal testimony came from MIT economics professor Michael Whinston, a key witness, who claimed that providing users with a choice in selecting their search engine or changing the default search engine on a device would significantly reshape Google’s current market dominance.
Doubt Cast on Testimony
Despite Whinston’s insistence that competitors like DuckDuckGo and Microsoft’s Bing are hampered by their lack of scale in comparison to Google, Judge Mehta raised doubts about the potential influence of quality on user preferences. The judge remarked, “It’s not clear to me why the share wouldn’t remain static.”
Whinston countered by suggesting that if rivals managed to improve their scale, there might be a shift in user preference, citing factors like word of mouth and media reviews of search engines.
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