Weinberg, whose company is a search engine and browser rival of Google, said this while testifying during the Google antitrust trial, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.

In that trial, the court is considering remedies after determining that Google has a monopoly in the search market. One remedy proposed by the Department of Justice would require the company to sell Chrome.

In his “back-of-the-envelope” estimate of the value of Chrome, Weinberg said he focused on the browser’s user base, according to the report.

The estimate is higher than the $20 billion value estimated by Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh in November, and a $50 billion price tag could reduce the number of offers for the browser, the report said.

OpenAI Head of Product and ChatGPT Nick Turley told the court Tuesday (April 22) that OpenAI and “many other parties” would try to buy Chrome if it were available.

ChatGPT can be downloaded as an extension for the Chrome browser, but it would be a better product if Chrome were more deeply integrated into OpenAI, Turley said.

In that case, OpenAI would “have the ability to introduce users into what an AI-first experience looks like,” he added.

Turley also told the court Tuesday that OpenAI approached Google about a partnership to power ChatGPT last summer but got turned down.

OpenAI was experiencing issues with its existing search provider and was years away from having ChatGPT be able to answer most queries using its own search technology, so the company asked Google about an API that would improve the AI chatbot’s ability to deliver accurate and up-to-date answers, Turley said.

Google declined the request in August, he added.

This three-week antitrust trial started Monday (April 21) and is being heard by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, the same judge who ruled in August that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in the search business with practices like paying Apple to make its search engine the default option on that company’s devices.

The post Google’s Chrome Worth $50 Billion, DuckDuckGo CEO Tells Court appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Year to date, through April 21, the number of deals is down 19%, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday (April 22), citing data from LSEG.

In February, there was no announcement of a deal valued over $10 billion globally — and that was the first time in 25 months that was the case — the report said.

March saw two large deals announced, with Google acquiring Wiz and Sycamore Partners taking over Walgreens Boots Alliance, according to the report.

In April, even with Global Payments saying it would acquire Worldpay for $24 billion, the number of deals is down 45% year over year, and the value is down 1%, the report said.

Merger activity commonly slows during the first months of a new administration in Washington, D.C., but the market has also been rattled by the trade war, President Donald Trump’s threats to fire Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell and uncertainty about how administration officials will view M&A deals that could have antitrust implications, according to the report.

Still, dealmakers expect the agencies of the Trump Administration to be more flexible in approving deals than was the Biden Administration, the report said.

Many are watching the Google-Wiz deal to see if that is the case, per the report. The report also noted that Capital One’s previously announced $35 billion acquisition of Discover got conditional approval this month.

It was reported in December that there was increased enthusiasm about dealmaking after Trump’s election, with some predicting a more favorable regulatory environment, but many saying it was too soon to tell what shape the new administration’s economic policies would take.

On March 24, it was reported that despite the hopes of some in the banking world that the new administration would provide a more friendly regulatory environment, ushering in a new era of “megamergers,” those predictions had not yet come to pass.

As the first quarter was coming to a close, amid uncertainty about Trump Administration policies, the number of transactions worldwide had fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade.

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The trial will be heard by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, the same judge who ruled in August that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in the search business with practices like paying Apple to make its search engine the default option on that company’s devices, Bloomberg reported Monday.

The changes proposed by the Justice Department include forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser, license search data to competitors and stop paying other companies to make its products the primary choice on their devices and services, according to the report.

Google argues that those moves would degrade the products consumers use every day and proposes instead that consumers be allowed to select their preferred browser and that Google then be able to split revenue with competitors, per the report.

Google Vice President, Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland wrote in a Sunday (April 20) blog post that the company will appeal the judge’s decision in the lawsuit, as it has long said it would, and that in the meantime the company will argue that the Justice Department’s proposals “go miles beyond the Court’s decision, and would hurt America’s consumers, economy and technological leadership.”

Mehta has said he will probably make his decision on the remedies by August, according to the Bloomberg report.

The verdict announced in August in the antitrust case marked a turning point in a legal battle that began when the Justice Department and 11 states filed their case in October 2020.

Immediately after the antitrust ruling, Google vowed that it would appeal the verdict, with Kent Walker, global affairs president at Google, telling PYMNTS that the decision “recognizes that Google offers the best search engine but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available.”

The verdict and the court’s delay in recommending remedies left observers speculating about the implications it would have on the connected economy.

The Justice Department officially recommended breaking up Google in November, saying in a court document that bold measures are necessary to restore competition.

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As The New York Times reported Thursday (April 17), Judge Leonie Brinkema found Google had violated the law to establish its dominance in the online advertising system.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and a group of states had sued the company, claiming that its monopoly in advertising technology (AdTech) helped Google charge higher prices and take a larger portion of each sale.

“In addition to depriving rivals of the ability to compete, this exclusionary conduct substantially harmed Google’s publisher customers, the competitive process, and, ultimately, consumers of information on the open web,” said Judge Brinkema, who also dismissed one portion of the government’s case.

The NYT report notes that the ruling adds to other legal troubles facing the $1.88 trillion company, issues that could reshape Google and alter the power it holds over the internet.

“We won half of this case and we will appeal the other half. The Court found that our advertiser tools and our acquisitions, such as DoubleClick, don’t harm competition,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president for regulatory affairs, said in a statement provided to PYMNTS.

“We disagree with the Court’s decision regarding our publisher tools. Publishers have many options and they choose Google because our ad tech tools are simple, affordable and effective.”

The company at trial had offered up expert testimony from economist Mark Israel, who argued regulates had focused too much on a small part of the online advertising sector — specifically, “open web display advertising,” which includes the rectangular ads that normally show up on websites when people browse on desktop computers.

Israel testified that this definition ignores the wider scope of competition faced by Google in the changing digital landscape, stressing that advertisers have increasingly shifted their spending to social media platforms such as Facebook and TikTok, or major online retailers like Amazon.

The ruling follows a decision from another judge last year that Google holds an online search monopoly. Now, that judge is considering a request by the DOJ to break up the company. The government has also sought to have Google sell some of its AdTech business.

Meanwhile, Google is also facing a $6.6 billion lawsuit in the United Kingdom. Filed this week, the suit claims the company exploited its dominant position in the online search market to drive up advertising costs for businesses.

Google has called the case meritless, with a spokesperson telling Reuters it was “yet another speculative and opportunistic case.”

The post Google Trial Judge: Tech Giant Holds Illegal Ad Monopoly appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

January 24, 2023 – Lawsuit Filed

• The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and 17 states file an antitrust lawsuit against Google LLC in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
• The suit alleges Google illegally monopolized the advertising technology (AdTech) market, violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, and seeks to force Google to divest significant portions of its AdTech business.

March–April 2023 – Early Legal Maneuvers

• Google requests to move the case to New York, which Judge Leonie Brinkema denies.
• Google files a motion to dismiss; Brinkema denies it, allowing the case to proceed.

August–September 2023 – Recusal Attempt

• Google seeks the recusal of Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, citing bias. Judge Brinkema denies this request.

February 2024 – Trial Date Set

• The court announces the trial will begin on Sept. 9, 2024.

April–May 2024 – Pretrial Motions

• Google files for summary judgment, arguing the DOJ miscalculated its market share.
• Google successfully moves to strike the DOJ’s jury trial demand; the trial is set to proceed before a magistrate judge.

September 9–27, 2024 – Trial

• The trial opens before Judge Brinkema and concludes in three weeks.
• DOJ presents evidence that Google used acquisitions (notably DoubleClick and AdMeld) and integration strategies to dominate the AdTech market, locking in customers and disadvantaging rivals.
• Witnesses testify about Google’s practices, including preferential treatment for its own ad exchange and restrictive policies that harmed publishers and competitors.

November 25, 2024 – Closing Arguments

• Both sides deliver closing arguments, with DOJ emphasizing Google’s anticompetitive conduct and Google defending its business practices as innovative and responsive to competition.

April 17, 2025 – Judge’s Ruling

• Judge Brinkema rules that Google illegally acquired and maintained monopoly power in two key AdTech markets: the publisher ad server market and the ad exchange market for open-web display advertising.
• The court finds that Google’s contractual and technological integration of its publisher ad server and ad exchange enabled it to entrench its monopoly, harm competition, and disadvantage publishers and consumers.
• Brinkema schedules a future hearing to determine remedies, with the DOJ seeking divestiture of Google’s AdTech businesses, especially Google Ad Manager.

The post Key Dates in Google’s AdTech Monopoly Case From Filing to Federal Ruling appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

“For more than 100 years, American public policy has insisted firms must compete if they want to succeed,” Matheson said in his opening statement. “The reason we are here is that Meta broke the deal.”

The FTC is seeking to force Meta to unwind its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, which the commission originally had approved in 2012 and 2014, respectively. In a blog post Sunday, Meta called the case “weak” and accused the agency of engaging in “an unprecedented exercise in revisionist history,” that “sends the message that no deal is ever final, and that businesses operating in America will be punished for innovating.”

In an appearance on Fox Business Monday morning, FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson pushed back on that criticism, saying the antitrust watchdog is obligated to monitor changing market conditions.

“The FTC doesn’t clear transactions, it tries to make predictions about whether a transaction will be anticompetitive,” he told host Maria Bartiromo. “Here we have actual evidence that the transactions turned out to be anticompetitive.”

Despite Meta’s emphasis on the decade that passed since the deals were approved, Ferguson focused his comments on 2020, when the case was originally brought. The FTC began investigating Meta prior to the 2020 election and filed the lawsuit in December of that year, in the final weeks of the first Donald Trump administration. At the time, Trump and his supporters were disputing his loss to Joe Biden, and Meta, then Facebook, was among the social media platforms the outgoing president accused of suppressing conservative voices and manipulating the election.

The acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp gave Meta “a tremendous amount of power,” Ferguson said. “We’re addressing the power of Meta and making sure the situation we had in 2020 will never again arise.”

Facebook officials have lobbied the FTC and other centers of power in Washington intensively to try to settle the case before trial or get it dismissed altogether.

According to a report Monday in Semafor, however, Ferguson, along with Justice Department Antitrust Division head Gail Slater and former aide to Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) Mike Davis, whether with the president in the Oval Office last week to “stiffen Trump’s spine against a relentless wave of lobbying from Meta.”

Zuckerberg is expected to be among the first witnesses called in the trial and could take the stand as early as Monday afternoon. Also scheduled to testify are former Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Instagram Co-founder Kevin Systrom.

“We certainly think [Meta’s] a monopoly, Ferguson said. “We’re making sure that 2020 can never happen again.”

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Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff have continued gathering information for the investigation, Bloomberg reported Wednesday (March 12), citing unnamed sources.

Reached by PYMNTS, the FTC declined to comment on the report.

Microsoft did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

According to the Bloomberg report, the FTC sent Microsoft a civil investigative demand late last year demanding information about the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) operations, data centers, software licensing practices and decision to cut funding on its own AI projects after making a deal with OpenAI.

One company that was asked for information as part of the investigation told Bloomberg that the FTC wants to determine whether Microsoft has an edge over other AI companies because of the profits it earns from other parts of the business, per the report.

The FTC’s questions about the company’s software licensing practices may relate to competitors’ complaints about Microsoft bundling its office productivity, security software and cloud offerings, which makes it harder for them to compete, according to the report.

Microsoft’s decision to cancel some of its own work on AI after investing in OpenAI and using that company’s software is also under scrutiny by the FTC because that move may have reduced competition in the field, per the report.

Wide-ranging antitrust investigations like the one targeting Microsoft can take years and don’t always result in a case brought by the FTC, the report said.

Microsoft spokesmen Alex Haurek said in the report: “We are working cooperatively with the agency.”

It was reported in November that the FTC was set to investigate allegedly anticompetitive practices at Microsoft’s cloud computing business, focusing on allegations that the tech giant illegally uses the market power of its Office 365 productivity software to benefit its Azure cloud service.

In December, it was reported that Microsoft formally requested an investigation into the FTC after reports surfaced that details of the antitrust investigation were leaked. The company asked the regulator’s inspector general to examine whether senior management at the agency disclosed nonpublic information about the probe.

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EU lawmakers wrote to U.S. officials saying claims that the EU is using its digital competition laws to unfairly punish American companies are unfounded, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday (March 6).

“Given the importance of our shared values in promoting fair competition and innovation, it is essential that we align our efforts to address the challenges posed by dominant digital platforms,” the lawmakers’ letter said, per the report.

It was signed by nine members of the European Parliament and sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, the report said.

The letter said the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) — the basis for investigations into Apple, Google and Meta — does not only target American companies, per the report. For example, the lawmakers said Dutch Booking.com and China’s TikTok have also been examined under the act.

The lawmakers also argued that many U.S. companies hope to benefit from the regulations and have campaigned for the EU to enforce the DMA, according to the report.

For example, streaming companies like Netflix, “currently burdened by Apple’s and Google’s high app store fees, would also benefit from a fairer competitive landscape under the DMA,” EU lawmakers said, per the report, adding that thousands of American startups would see new revenues from the EU if tech giants would obey the law.

The letter came a little more than a week after a similar correspondence from U.S. lawmakers to European regulators regarding the DMA. Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin said the DMA places unfair burdens on U.S. companies and favors European tech firms. The letter also criticized the 10% fines on global yearly revenues companies are subject to under the DMA.

“These severe fines appear to have two goals: to compel businesses to follow European standards worldwide and as a European tax on American companies,” the letter said.

A European Commission spokesperson told PYMNTS in response to the letter from Jordan and Fitzgerald: “The Digital Markets Act applies equally to all large digital actors operating in the EU single market, irrespective of their place of incorporation or of their controlling shareholders, to ensure a safe, fair and level-playing field in the EU.”

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The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) is considering “remedies” for the two companies after uncovering a lack of competition in the card payment market, according to a Thursday (March 6) press release.

“Cards are a popular and convenient way to make payments in the U.K., so any issues in the card market can have a negative impact on … businesses and ultimately consumers,” PSR Managing Director David Geale said in the release. “We have found that there is a lack of competition in the market and evidence that Mastercard and Visa might have been able to charge U.K. businesses millions of pounds more than they would in a properly competitive market, impacting on their ability to invest and grow.”

The findings showed that Visa and Mastercard face “ineffective competitive constraints” in supplying scheme and processing services to acquirers and merchants, the release said. Fees have jumped by at least 25% since 2017, costing U.K. businesses at least an extra 170 million pounds (about $219 million) per year.

The companies have not offered “sufficiently clear and detailed information” on fees, leading to worsening outcomes for merchants and acquirers, especially in terms of raising their costs, per the release.

“They then have little choice but to either pass these increased costs onto consumers or incur the costs themselves, impacting their ability to invest,” the release said.

Mastercard emailed the following statement to PYMNTS:

“We disagree with the findings in today’s report, which continues to underplay the true competitiveness of the payment industry and our ongoing innovation and investment into security and the consumer experience. Our resilient, global network provides peace of mind and strong consumer protections, preventing billions of pounds of fraud each year. We will continue to work transparently with our customers and demonstrate to the PSR the significant value Mastercard and electronic payments bring to people and businesses across the UK.”

Reached for comment by PYMNTS, a Visa spokesperson said the company’s fees reflect the “immense value” the company provides merchants, consumers and financial institutions.

“This includes extremely high levels of security and fraud prevention, near-perfect operational resilience and reliability, and a wide range of consumer protections and high-quality products and services that serve consumer and merchant needs,” the company said. “Through our investments, the U.K. has been a global pioneer in payments technology.”

The PSR’s action came as Mastercard’s and Visa’s place in the marketplace is being called into question elsewhere.

For example, November brought a report that the European Commission was investigating whether the companies’ “scheme fees” were harming retailers.

Also in November, the Senate Judiciary Committee convened a hearing on Visa’s and Mastercard’s fees, with Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, then-chair of the committee, accusing the companies of having a “stranglehold” on the credit card market.

The post Visa and Mastercard Accused of Card Monopoly by UK Watchdog appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

The CMA said in a Tuesday press release that it provisionally considers that GBT’s proposed merger with corporate travel management company CWT Holdings should be allowed to proceed.

After saying in an earlier interim report on its merger inquiry published in November that the proposed merger was likely to lessen competition, the CMA said in a supplementary interim report published Tuesday that CWT is a weaker competitor than it has been in the past and that other suppliers can offer customers an alternative to the merged business.

“In this case, having considered all of the evidence in the round, particularly the further analysis of CWT’s financial position, we have now provisionally concluded that the merger will not result in a substantial lessening of competition in corporate travel management services,” Martin Coleman, chair of the independent panel of experts conducting the investigation, said in the release.

The CMA will now accept comments until Feb. 25 and then make a final decision on March 9, according to the release.

Noting the CMA’s announcement in a Tuesday press release, GBT Chief Legal Officer and Global Head of M&A Eric J. Bock said the updated provisional conclusions mark “an important milestone toward the consummation of the transaction.”

“The CMA’s revised findings reinforce the company’s belief that the DOJ’s lawsuit is fundamentally flawed, taking a narrow and outdated view of competition, and disregarding the emergence of numerous significant competitors in business travel,” Bock said.

The DOJ filed a lawsuit to prevent the merger in January, citing concerns over reduced competition in the travel management sector.

“If completed, this deal would extinguish fierce head-to-head competition between Amex GBT and CWT and risk higher prices, fewer choices and less innovation,” the DOJ said in its complaint.

When announcing its planned acquisition of CWT in March, Amex GBT said it would offer CWT’s 4,000 customers access to the Amex GBT ecosystem.

“Bringing CWT onto the proven Amex GBT software and services model will create more choice for customers, more opportunities for people and more value for shareholders,” Amex GBT CEO Phil Abbott said at the time in a press release.

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