Washington, D.C. — Following new reporting that Google spent a total of $26.3 billion to maintain its status as default search engine in 2021 — revealed today during the US v. Google trial, the most important antitrust trial of the century — the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement. The number far exceeds earlier estimates and represents a 270% increase in Google’s traffic acquisition costs in under a decade.

“It’s a massive amount of money and it strikes at the heart of the case,” said Lee Hepner, Legal Counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Google knows that if it didn’t pay tens of billions of dollars to exclude rivals, it would lose market share. It’s reasonable to believe that Google is also paying Apple to stay out of developing its own search engine, for which Apple gets tens of billions of dollars per year to split the market. If that’s the case, it would be the definition of illegal.”

The $26 billion figure far exceeds what industry experts had estimated to be the cost of Google’s exclusive search agreements. Department of Justice counsel also elicited testimony that Google pays “many times” more for exclusive search agreements than it invests in research & development. One of the largest single contracts is Google’s estimated $18 billion agreement for exclusive search status on the Apple iPhone. Another exhibit showed that the top 2 highest value searches in terms of ad revenue for Google were related to the Apple iPhone, illustrating the mutual benefit of the companies working “as if we are one company.” By comparison, in 2014, Google reportedly paid $7.1 billion for exclusive search status with browsers and devices. That dollar amount has increased 270 percent in just 7 years.

Since the beginning of this trial the corporation whose mission it is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible have made every effort to keep information about the trial from the public. The most important trial of the century is the most secretive trial of 2023.

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.