Brandon Drenon
Reporting from inside court

An email exchange between executives at Google and Apple is presented as evidence. In it, Google says "No default placement - no revenue share."

Dintzer says the email demonstrates this is Google saying 'take it or leave it'.

"Google began weaponising defaults in 2007. Default homepage can be a powerful strategic weapon in the search battle," Dintzer says.

He says Google is the only pre-installed search engine on Apple devices.

Brandon Drenon
Reporting from inside court

As Dintzer has tried to make the case that search engines are a product over which Google maintains a monopolistic control, judge Mehta asked about other tech companies, like TikTok, that Google has said offer also competition in search.

Dintzer replied that "the information available on TikTok is limited to the information available on TikTok".

Unlike Google, he said, "they can't answer (questions) with all of the information available on the internet".

Brandon Drenon
Reporting from inside court

Image source, Getty Images

We're off. It's a small courtroom, and I'm sitting in the media room, following the proceedings with all the other journalists who queued up this morning.

Kenneth Dintzer, a senior Department of Justice lawyer opens the case, saying: "This case is about the future of the internet and whether the Google search engine will ever face meaningful competition."

For the last 12 years, he said, Google has had a monopoly on search engines.

"In 2010 they began maintaining the monopoly they had," Dintzer told the judge.

"Google pays billions every year for defaults because they are uniquely powerful for distributing search services … 50% of every search in the US is conducted through a purchase default."

Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter

The company maintains that it provides a superior product - and nothing but its stronger offering has prevented rivals from working out their own agreements.

Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, says Google can persuasively liken its deals to negotiations between food-makers and supermarkets over where products are placed in stores, agreements that have been examined by US courts and deemed legal.

Schruers says he expects it will also be difficult for the government to prove that consumers have been hurt - the traditional standard by which illegal monopoly power has been judged in the US.

"US anti-trust law does not protect competitors from their competition. It protects the competitive process in order to protect consumers," he says.

"Here it seems like the government is picking winners and losers... and courts have traditionally rejected that view."

In short, it argues Google will continue to "cripple the competitive process", reduce consumer choice and stifle innovation, unless there is a court order.

It says the search firm is the "unchallenged gateway" to the internet for billions around the world, meaning advertisers must "pay a toll" to Google's search advertising.

US consumers must accept Google's policies and privacy practices, and new companies with innovative business models "cannot emerge from Google's long shadow", the US Justice Department argues.

Brandon Drenon
Outside court

I'm here at the E Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington DC, where a long queue to get in had formed well ahead of doors opening at 08:15 local time.

I left the longer line of about 50 people waiting outdoors - with dozens more reportedly waiting inside - to head to a shorter queue around the corner.

Journalists and professionals in business attire comprise the majority of the crowd, but parents with their children, including infants in strollers, are lined up, too.

Natalie Sherman
New York business reporter

Google is accused of unfairly cementing its position as the world's go-to search engine by paying billions of dollars to phone-makers like Apple and web browsers like Mozilla to be installed as the default option.

Prosecutors contend the deals gave Google - which handles some 90% of global search queries - such a data advantage that it blocked rivals from emerging and violated US competition laws.

The suit, filed in the waning days of the Trump administration in 2020, is seen as a landmark case - the most serious challenge to the way the tech industry operates in decades and a key test of whether the US government can prevail in its fight to rein in the industry.

Emma Owen
Live reporter

When did you last Google something? I'm guessing it wasn't long ago. The company has such dominance that its very name has become part of our language.

Well today it's the focus of the first monopoly trial of the modern internet era - Google vs the US government - and it’s expected to last for 10 weeks.

The company is accused of abusing its power to dominate the search market by paying to be the default option on products like Apple and Samsung phones, and stifling competition by doing so.

The justice department has spent three years putting its case together, and to defend itself, Google has enlisted hundreds of employees, three powerful law firms and spent millions of dollars on legal fees.

It's expected to argue that it is dominant simply because its product is superior.

I'm in Washington DC, where the trial is taking place, and along with colleagues in London, I'll be bringing you updates, reaction and analysis.