Washington, D.C. — On September 21, Insider revealed a search partnership between TikTok and Google for Google to become a search option within the TikTok app. This is a significant development given Google is in a federal courtroom defending itself in a trial initiated by the Department of Justice which argues that the $1.7 trillion company illegally locks out its competitors in the search engine market. In response, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“It’s astonishing that in the middle of a giant antitrust trial, Google cut yet another deal — this one with TikTok — to monopolize customer access to search,” said Matt Stoller, the Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Unless Judge Mehta rules against Google, Google will continue to treat laws as mere suggestions.”

In court last week, Google revealed that it pays Apple over $10 billion dollars annually to not only direct people to Google search when they are using an Apple iPhone and the Safari browser, but also that Google makes these annual payments to Apple on the condition that Apple does not build its own search engine.

These multi-billion dollar payments from Google to Apple and other phone manufacturers and web browsers impede innovation and harm competition, ultimately cementing Google’s monopoly, because the doors are closed for other companies to offer their search engines for adoption.

“We ultimately decided after three years of trying this that it was a quixotic exercise because of [Google’s] contracts,“ Gabe Weinberg said testifying at the US versus Google trial this week. He’s the CEO and Founder of DuckDuckGo, a search engine company that offers consumers more privacy and control over their data.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.