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THE TAKE: DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg, who was testifying at a trial in Washington to determine if Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Google broke US antitrust law, was meant to support the U.S. government’s argument that Google’s big pockets were used to illegally hold back its smaller rivals.
KEY QUOTE:
Weinberg testified that he had pressed particular companies – he did not name them – to use DuckDuckGo as the default and found some interest but ultimately no success because of Google’s contracts with the companies.
“We generally saw a lot of interest,” he said. “We ultimately decided, this was after three years of trying this, that this was a quixotic exercise because of the contracts.”
CONTEXT:
*The government has argued that Google, which has some 90% of the search market, illegally paid $10 billion annually to smartphone makers like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and wireless carriers like AT&T (NYSE:T) and others to be the default in search on their devices in order to stay on top.
*The clout in search then makes Google a heavy hitter in the lucrative advertising market, boosting its profits.
*DuckDuckGo has around 2.5% of the online search engine market because it has not been able to win a default position on devices made by big companies.
