Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testifies at Google antitrust trial

Microsoft’s Bing search engine is not so good as Google. Consider it or not, it appears no person — not even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella — disputes that truth. However over hours of contentious testimony from Nadella in the course of the landmark US v. Google antitrust trial, the rationale for that inferiority grew to become the query of the day.

Nadella, in a darkish blue swimsuit, took the stand early Monday morning after a couple of minutes of scheduling updates and a delay lengthy sufficient that Decide Amit Mehta requested jokingly, “Mr. Nadella didn’t return to Seattle, did he?” However finally, questioning started from Adam Severt, a lawyer on the Division of Justice. 

At first, Severt merely requested Nadella to clarify why he even needed to attempt to compete with Google. Nadella’s reply? Cash. “I see search as the most important software program class on the market by far,” he mentioned. “I used to consider Home windows and Workplace as engaging companies till I noticed search.” He defined that Bing didn’t should win the market to be an enormous enterprise — and that Bing already turns a revenue for Microsoft. (Google’s lead counsel, John Schmidtlein, later joked that he wished his regulation agency might rely “marginally worthwhile” within the billions of {dollars}, as Nadella did with Bing. “You must get into the search enterprise!” Nadella gleefully replied.)

Severt’s questions targeted for a very long time on Google’s billion-dollar deal to be the unique search supplier on Apple gadgets and what it would imply to Microsoft if it have been to have that deal as a substitute. “It might be a game-changer,” Nadella mentioned. He mentioned that Microsoft was ready to present Apple the entire financial upside of the deal if Apple have been to modify to Bing — and mentioned he was ready to lose as much as $15 billion a yr within the course of. Nadella even mentioned he was prepared to cover the Bing model in Apple customers’ search engines like google and yahoo and respect any of the corporate’s privateness needs, so pressing was his have to get extra information at any value. “Defaults are the one factor that matter,” he mentioned, “when it comes to altering consumer habits.” He known as the concept it’s straightforward to modify “bogus.”

For Nadella, turning into Apple’s default search engine wouldn’t be in regards to the cash, a minimum of indirectly. “We would have liked to be much less grasping and extra aggressive,” he defined. A sudden enhance in distribution, he mentioned, would give Bing a rise in what Nadella known as “question stream,” which basically simply means extra folks would do extra searches. Extra incoming searches means extra information the Bing workforce can use to enhance the search engine and extra causes for advertisers to come back to the platform. An improved search engine will get used extra, which suggests extra information, and spherical and spherical it goes. That is the virtuous cycle of search engines like google and yahoo, and Nadella believes Bing might use that cycle to rapidly catch as much as Google’s high quality. Or, when you’re Bing — the dropping social gathering that may’t get the queries, the information, the advertisers, or the customers — “it’s a vicious cycle.”

Has Microsoft tried to turn out to be Apple’s default search engine, Severt requested? Sure, Nadella mentioned. How’d it go? “Not nicely,” Nadella deadpanned. Not solely are the economics of the Google deal massively favorable for Apple, he mentioned, however Apple may be afraid of what Google would do if it misplaced default standing. Google has various massively well-liked providers, like Gmail and YouTube — what if Google used these apps to relentlessly promote downloading Chrome, thus instructing folks to bypass the Safari browser solely? That worry, Nadella claims, retains Apple and Google collectively as a lot as something. 

Each Severt and Mehta requested Nadella about how AI — and particularly Microsoft’s huge partnership with OpenAI, which has fully modified the best way Bing works — will change the search market. Severt even particularly referenced Nadella’s remark about “making Google dance,” which Nadella mentioned to The Verge earlier this yr. Nadella walked that one again a bit: “Name it the exuberance of somebody who has 3 p.c share,” he mentioned.

Whereas Nadella mentioned AI has the potential to shake up the market a bit, he additionally believes it might additional entrench Google’s dominance. Search engines like google and yahoo are essentially reliant on web sites permitting themselves to be crawled in order that the engines can perceive their content material and direct customers to these websites. Nadella known as search engines like google and yahoo “the organizing layer of the web” in that sense. However as massive language model-powered programs proceed to develop, publishers and platforms are rising cautious of how their information is ingested and used to coach AI programs. These publishers, Nadella mentioned, could begin to signal unique offers that enable Google — and solely Google — to make use of their information. That will basically crush each different search engine in the marketplace. “What’s publicly out there in the present day, will or not it’s publicly out there tomorrow?” he requested; “That’s the problem.” He mentioned he’s already listening to from publishers with a deal in place with Google, asking Bing to match it.

In the end, Nadella’s story was not that completely different from what different upstart search engines like google and yahoo say: Google makes it unimaginable to compete by making itself the default search engine all over the place. Since most individuals don’t change their defaults, which means no different firm has an opportunity to get in entrance of customers and get the information they should construct a terrific product and construct a significant competitor.

When Google had an opportunity to cross-examine Nadella, Schmidtlein made a unique case. In his view, Bing is just not an inferior search engine as a result of it was disadvantaged of oxygen by Google; Bing is inferior as a result of Microsoft has mismanaged its search and cell merchandise for the higher a part of 20 years. A key a part of Google’s protection is that it’s not unlawful to construct one of the best search engine, and Schmidtlein argued that’s the solely factor Google did.

Schmidtlein led Nadella on an almost two-hour tour of Microsoft’s failures, from MSN Search in 1998 by means of the ugly finish of Web Explorer, the costly failure of Home windows Cellphone, the limitless renaming and rebooting of Microsoft’s search merchandise, its massively problematic offers to bundle Bing search with BlackBerry and Nokia telephones, and way more. (Nadella, as he did so usually in the course of the cross-examination, nodded and mentioned “appropriate” and “that sounds proper.”) In each case, Schmidtlein argued, Google merely out-invested and out-executed Microsoft.

One frequent level of emphasis from attorneys on either side was the best way Bing and Edge are bundled into Home windows. Schmidtlein identified that though Microsoft bundles Edge and Bing with virtually each Home windows PC on the planet, Chrome and Google Search are each vastly extra well-liked amongst Home windows customers. That, he argued, as Google has all through this trial, proves that defaults don’t really matter a lot. Nadella and the DOJ mentioned it proved the alternative. The actual fact that Bing has market share of any variety on Home windows — which is someplace within the teenagers, Nadella mentioned, versus “low, low single digits” on cell — is proof that defaults do work. Extra folks used Bing, which helped make Bing higher, which made fewer folks change. Not everybody would drop Google instantly, he mentioned, however controlling the defaults has helped Microsoft start to make a dent.

Nadella repeatedly mentioned he believes that defaults matter in an enormous approach, it doesn’t matter what the Home windows market share numbers say. When Mehta requested him to reply to the concept customers can simply change search engines like google and yahoo, he mentioned that “my solely argument towards that’s that customers don’t change.” His finest instance: Apple Maps, which began out disastrously dangerous however has nonetheless gained market share within the final decade as a result of it’s preinstalled on each iPhone. “Individuals use it — it’s the default,” he mentioned.

The facility of defaults is likely one of the central questions of your entire US v. Google case and can proceed to come back up. (The witness after Nadella is former Neeva CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy, who has additionally mentioned his search engine was crushed partly as a result of overcoming Google’s default standing was so troublesome.) Nadella is within the uncommon place to have seen either side — what it’s prefer to be the default and what it’s prefer to contend whenever you’re not — and argued resolutely that defaults are the one factor that actually issues. Google, however, says that constructing one of the best product is the one factor that actually issues and that Bing has by no means come near doing that. Which aspect of that debate Decide Mehta agrees with often is the story of this complete trial.

On the finish of his testimony, Nadella spent a couple of minutes debating with Schmidtlein how huge the search engine market actually is. (That’s the opposite query of this — and virtually each — antitrust case: what’s the market we’re debating, and the way aggressive is it actually?) They mentioned whether or not vertical search engines like google and yahoo like Yelp and Tripadvisor pose a menace, whether or not Microsoft competes with Amazon and Fb for search adverts, and whether or not consumer habits is shifting away from the so-called “common search engines like google and yahoo” like Bing and Google. 

Schmidtlein argued that search engines like google and yahoo have an enormous and rising record of rivals. Nadella largely dismissed the thought. “I’m not inquisitive about competing with TikTok,” mentioned the identical man who as soon as almost acquired TikTok. Schmidtlein laughed in response. “We’ll see how that goes.”