U.S. presses for Google to share data by citing Yahoo Japan deal
U.S. antitrust enforcers reached back to a deal Google struck 15 years ago to argue that the Alphabet unit should once again share information with third parties, this time to end its illegal monopoly of online search.
Google's agreement in 2010 to provide Yahoo Japan with access to search index data applied only to Google's Japanese-language index, not its global index. But Justice Department lawyer David Dahlquist said in court Friday it showed Google had voluntarily shared data with others in the past.
Google has been pushing back on the remedies proposed by the U.S. to address its search dominance — one of which is sharing search data with rivals. Google has claimed that would imperil user privacy and put its intellectual property at risk.
The Yahoo deal was revisited as part of a three-week trial that will determine how Google should restore competition to online search after U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled last year that the tech giant had illegally maintained a monopoly in the market. In a separate antitrust case before a different judge, the Justice Department urged Friday that Google be ordered to sell key parts of its advertising technology to address a ruling that it illegally monopolizes much of the market for placing ads on the web.
The government wants Google to divest itself of its Chrome browser, license some search data to competitors and stop paying for exclusive positions on other apps and devices. Google has countered that the government's proposals are too extreme, saying they would hurt American consumers and the economy, as well as weaken U.S. technological leadership.
The document detailing the Yahoo accord was presented during cross-examination of Jesse Adkins, a Google director of product management for search syndication, who oversaw implementation of the agreement for a number of years. The deal called for Google to share document IDs, URLs, and various signals like popularity and spam scores.
"You're aware, sir, that the Yahoo Japan agreement is actually the foundation for plaintiff's data-sharing remedy in this manner?' Dahlquist asked as he walked Adkins through the different points of the agreement in court.
"I will take your word for it,' Adkins responded.
Google has long had a relationship with Yahoo Japan, a service unrelated to the U.S.-based Yahoo search engine, to provide it with search results and some backend work related to search advertising. During questioning, Google's lawyer sought to clarify that the tech giant had agreed to share portions of its Japanese-language search index solely to have Yahoo Japan assess the quality of Google's search results and provide feedback to Google.
Adkins also testified that Yahoo Japan needed the data that Google shared to make sure that Google's search results complied with local laws, for instance around properly classifying adult websites. The agreement evolved over time, Adkins said, with Google later providing a more limited set of data to Yahoo Japan in real-time rather than the bulk data dumps it had in the past.
Google's next witness was Eric Muhlheim, the chief financial officer of Mozilla, who discussed the importance of its partnership with the search giant for its revenue model. Last year, Mozilla — maker of the popular Firefox browser — brought in $570 million, Muhlheim testified. Of that revenue, 85% came from Google, which pays Mozilla for an exclusive position on the Firefox browser.
In the short term, Muhlheim said, Mozilla's U.S. revenue would "drop precipitously' if the company were forced to switch to a different provider for Firefox's built-in search engine and no longer received compensation from Google under its longstanding revenue-sharing agreement.
"The ensuing hole in our revenue would have to be overcome by pretty significant cost cuts across the business,' Muhlheim said. The remedy would also decrease the amount of money the company could invest in its own software and make it less competitive, he added.
It could "start a downward spiral of usage as people defected from a browser, which could at the end of the day put Firefox out of business,' he said.
If Google were barred from paying for an exclusive position on Mozilla's Firefox browser, Muhlheim testified, the company would be on the lookout for alternatives. "But we'd really be struggling in the meantime,' he said.
In the last year, Muhlheim said the company has explored other options, including discussions with Microsoft about its Bing web browser taking the Mozilla's default search engine slot. But ultimately, Mozilla's assessment was that Bing wouldn't monetize as well as Google.
Muhlheim added that he thought Microsoft could reduce the amount of revenue it was willing to share with Mozilla over time if it were the only strong competitor for the search engine browser slot.
In a telling exchange near the end of Muhlheim's testimony, Mehta asked whether Mozilla would benefit from having "at least one other competitor' besides Google with equal quality of service competing for the search engine slot in the Firefox browser. Muhlheim answered that this would be a "better' world for Mozilla.
"Do you believe that the market conditions that exist today could achieve the outcome that you're talking about either in the short term or the long term?' Mehta asked.
"In some ways, it's hard to know, because AI is coming in. One could imagine that the amount of funding and the way people are working' in AI would create that world, Muhlheim responded. "So I don't think it's out of the question.'
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