New York, Oct 27 (EFE) – Google paid 26.3 billion dollars in 2021 to be the main Internet search engine, the company made this information public on Friday during the trial against it for monopoly in Washington .
The figure does not include a breakdown by company, but according to CNBC, the main beneficiary is certainly Apple.
The United States Department of Justice, which is prosecuting the case, argues that the technology company uses its dominant position in the search engine market to put up barriers for other companies and generate a kind of vicious circle.
Google, for its part, defends that it takes only a few clicks to use an alternative search engine.
The technology company usually publishes the amounts it spends on traffic acquisition costs, but combines them with the money it spends on advertising.
According to data revealed in court on Friday, the company’s traffic acquisition costs quadrupled between 2014 and 2021, while its search engine revenue tripled.
By 2021, the company’s search business generated $146 billion in revenue.
This is the federal government’s first major monopoly trial in the modern Internet era, in which Big Tech has become an opinion leader in areas ranging from information to entertainment.
The trial began in mid-September in a Washington court and is expected to last about ten weeks. EFE
jdg/mcd
