US presses on with fight against Google's search and advertising clout

investing.com:

By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Justice Department questioned a former Google executive about billion-dollar deals with mobile carriers and others that helped make Google the default search engine, in the second day of a once-in-a-generation antitrust trial on Wednesday.

Chris Barton, who was at Google from 2004 to 2011, said the company was quick to see the advantage of people using Google search on handheld devices and early versions of smartphones, spurring dramatic growth in the number of Google executives working on deals to win default status with mobile carriers.

Google's clout in search, the government argues, has helped Google, a $1 trillion company, build monopolies in some aspects of online search advertising. Since search is free, Google makes its money through advertising.

The government says the Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Inc unit paid $10 billion annually to wireless companies like AT&T (NYSE:T), device makers like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and browser makers like Mozilla to fend off rivals and keep its search engine's market share at around 90%.

Barton testified that in negotiating revenue-sharing deals with mobile carriers and Android smartphone makers, Google pressed for its search to be the default and to be exclusive. If Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)'s search engine Bing was the default on an Android phone, Barton said, then users would have a «difficult time finding or changing to Google.»

Barton said on his LinkedIn profile that he was responsible for leading Google's partnerships with mobile carriers like Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and AT&T, estimating that the deals «drive hundreds of millions in revenue.»

Google attorney John Schmidtlein said in opening arguments on Tuesday that the government was wrong to say