Google CFO Ruth Porat Knocks DOJ Antitrust Go well with, Says Search Rivals Might “Break By means of” If They Have been Good Sufficient – .

Ruth Porat, Google’s CFO, said an antitrust lawsuit filed by the Justice Department and 11 attorneys general last month against the search giant was unfounded.

Google dominates searches because that’s what users want, not because rivals can’t gain a foothold, she said during a Q&A at the New York Times DealBook Online Summit on Wednesday.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia last month, said Google cemented its dominance in search by paying to be the default browser for mobile smartphones, and that doing so is harming consumers by suppressing competition. It was a landmark legal measure at a time when dominant technology and social media companies are facing increased regulatory scrutiny on multiple fronts.

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“We don’t believe in the merits of the case. We very much believe that people come to us for the quality of the product, ”said Porat. “I think the fact that we’re sitting here on Zoom [shows] Innovation is everywhere – and [if] If you make a great product and focus on users, you will break through. “

The DOJ said Google pays wireless manufacturers and web browsers billions of dollars each year from its monopoly search advertising revenue as the default search engine by default. As a result, it accounts for nearly 90% of all general search engine queries in the US – nearly 95% on mobile.

Porat has been vaguely asked to comment on Fortnite maker Epic Games’ lawsuit against Apple (another major challenge) and Epic CEO Tim Sweeney’s general crusade against high fees levied by Apple and Google’s app stores Will: “Having a healthy ecosystem is important and we are. I am very aware of how we support developers. “(Sweeney, interviewed at the same conference, also on Wednesday, described Apple’s policies as” illegal “and said they had” a tremendous bias to the digital economy “.)

When asked about YouTube’s efforts to misinformation in elections, she said, “I’m proud of what we’ve done.”

“It’s a relentless effort,” she said. “We hired thousands upon thousands of people focused on content,” supplemented with machine learning to ensure that “we are anchored in authoritative data that is as objective as possible.”

However, a Nov. 10 NYT story described misinformation about elections that continued to linger on YouTube. They have been labeled the light-touch approach to Facebook and Twitter, which have tackled false or misleading election content with warnings and other measures.

Porat’s boss, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet, was not asked at a hearing yesterday to join Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, CEOs of Facebook and Twitter, for a barbecue by Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Senator Lindsey Graham. Some Democrats felt the omission was political – because YouTube did not provoke Conservatives in the same way by allowing misinformation videos to be viewed and shared without pushback.