Google would need to move 2K employees to meet antitrust demands: Search head
Liz Reid, the head of Google Search, has said that the company would have to divert over 20 per cent of the workforce to undertake the changes proposed by the US government in the antitrust search remedies case.
It would mean that between 1,000 to 2,000 Google Search employees would have to be reassigned for this purpose, Reid testified in court on Tuesday, March 6. A US district court in California wrapped up hearings in the antitrust remedies trial on Friday, March 9, according to a report by CNBC.
This comes roughly a year after Google was held guilty of violating US antitrust law by having an illegal monopoly in the online search market. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has proposed for Google to be forced to share search index data, click data, and more with its rivals in order to restore competition in the market.
Google's proprietary 'Knowledge Graph' database which is used to show search results contains more than 500 billion facts, Reid reportedly said in her testimony. The senior vice president also pointed out that Google had invested $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over the last ten years.
'People ask Google questions they wouldn't ask anyone else,' she said, adding that sharing such information with its competitors poses privacy risks. The final days of the trial to determine what penalties should be imposed on Google for its illegal search monopoly, also saw Apple's SVP of Services Eddy Cue take the witness stand.
Cue's primarily attempted to convince the judge that the search market is already so competitive that he should allow Google to continue paying Apple $20 billion a year for the former's search engine to be the default in the latter's Safari browser, according to Bloomberg.
He argued that the rise of web search in AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity may make users less inclined to visit Google as their primary way of finding information. This, in turn, is shrinking the antitrust threat posed by Google and making the market more competitive. The US government prosecutors obviously disagreed with this.
The closing arguments in the trial will be held on May 29 and 30, while the ruling is expected to be delivered in August this year. In addition to the sharing of proprietary search data and prohibiting exclusionary agreements with the likes of Apple, the DOJ also wants the court to force Google to sell-off its Chrome browser.
The company will also face a remedies trial in another antitrust case over its illegal monopoly of the ad tech business. This trial is expected to kick off in September 2025.
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