Google antitrust trial will be a Verizon executive, who will likely face questions about agreements that the search and advertising giant reached with wireless carriers to be the default on their smartphones.
The trial began Tuesday with talk of the «future of the internet» but quickly plunged into the weeds of commercial agreements with Android makers like Motorola and Samsung.
On Monday, the first witness will be Brian Higgins from Verizon who says on his LinkedIn profile that he is a «senior vice president of device and consumer product marketing» who focuses on Verizon's «device, product, and accessory portfolio.»
The Justice Department argues that Google agreements with mobile carriers and others worth $10 billion annually to win powerful default positions on smartphones and elsewhere so that it would dominate search to drive up its own profits.
James Kolotouros, a Google executive responsible for negotiating the company's agreements with Android device makers and carriers, testified late in the week that Google pressed Android smartphone makers to have Google as the default search engine and other Google apps pre-installed on their machines.
Under cross-examination from Google's John Schmidtlein, Kolotouros said that Google's goal in writing the contracts was to ensure the Android phones would compete with Apple's «elegance» and give users a predictable