Judge in landmark antitrust case grills Google, Justice during closing arguments

abcnews.go.com:

The judge overseeing a pivotal antitrust trial focused on whether Google is stifling competition and innovation has repeatedly indicated he believes it would be difficult for a formidable rival search engine to emerge

WASHINGTON — The judge overseeing a pivotal antitrust trial focused on whether Google is stifling competition and innovation repeatedly indicated Thursday that he believes it would be difficult for a formidable rival search engine to emerge.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta went back and forth with Google’s lead litigator, John Schmidtlein, during the first day of the trial's closing arguments, questioning whether another company could amass the money and data needed to develop a search engine that could eventually compete against Google.

“It seems to be very, very unlikely, if not impossible, under the current market conditions,” Mehta said. He added that it appeared odd to him that there is a marketplace where Google is making billions of dollars in profit yet nobody “is trying to enter into the market to cut into that profit.”

Google reaped an operating profit of nearly $96 billion last year, mostly by selling digital ads — a market that it also dominates largely because it controls about 90% of the U.S. internet search market.

The judge also questioned how common it is for users to move away from the default search engines pre-installed on their smart devices. The default search option is a key question in the trial. Federal prosecutors allege that Google protects its franchise by shelling out more than $20 billion annually to ensure its search engine automatically answers queries on Apple's iPhone and web browsers such as Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Lawyers for the Department of Justice contend the