Today, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) trial against Google. The U.S. Department of Justice has launched an investigation into Google, accusing the company of using its position to create a monopoly in the search industry.
Although the hearing was not made public, Bloomberg obtained some clips of Nadella’s testimony before the judge. During the hearing, Nadella mentioned that Microsoft has spent approximately $100 billion to build and develop its Bing search engine. He also pointed out that although Microsoft lags behind Google in market share, it believes it can contribute to the Internet search industry.
I think search or internet search is the largest software category. We are a very, very low share player but will continue to persist because we think it is a software category that we can contribute to.Satya Nadella also told Google lawyers that Microsoft “is competing against companies that have 97 percent share.”
According to Reuters, Satya Nadella also talked about user preferences for services. He noted that switching search engines is easier on desktop, but becomes more complicated on mobile. This ties in with testimony last week from Microsoft executive Jonathan Tinter, who claimed that Microsoft had to make Google the default search engine on its Surface Duo smartphones in order to obtain Android licenses from Google.
