Apple ‘the kingmaker’, Microsoft was willing to hide ‘Bing’: Nadella drops a bomb

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified Monday as a witness for the US Department of Justice in a landmark antitrust trial against Alphabet, Google’s parent company. The Justice Department alleges that Google, which controls about 90% of the search market, has abused the dominance of its ubiquitous search engine to stifle competition and innovation at the expense of consumers. The government argued that Google illegally paid $10 billion a year to smartphone manufacturers like Apple, wireless carriers like AT&T and others to be the default search engine on its devices in order to stay on top.

Here’s what Satya Nadella had to say to a packed courtroom in Washington, DC:

Nadella said it could never compete with the search engine giant, largely because of its arrangements with Apple.

“You can call it popular, but to me it is dominant,” Nadella told Google’s lawyers during tense questioning.

He said the unfair methods used by Google led to its dominance as a search engine, frustrating his company’s competing software, Bing.

“We are one of the alternatives, but we are not the alternative,” Nadella said.

Nadella revealed that Microsoft was willing to hide the branding of its search engine “Bing” on Apple Inc.’s devices. In order to secure an agreement with the iPhone maker. Nadella said that obtaining this virtual place from Apple would be a “game changer.”

“Whoever they choose, they make him king.”

The Microsoft CEO complained that Google was locking down content with expensive, exclusive deals with publishers when the tech giants were competing for large troves of content needed to train artificial intelligence.

“When I meet with publishers now, they say Google will write this check and it’s exclusive and you have to match it,” he said.

Nadella said he now worries that Google will be able to use its dominance in search to powerful content providers that are key to training generative AI models.

“I am very concerned, despite my enthusiasm, that this vicious cycle could become even more vicious,” Nadella said.