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24 ¦ OCTOBER 26, 2020 NEWS

¦ From MEET GOOGLE’S on PAGE 23 metrics like privacy), higher advertising prices and
represented Google in a successful defense against less innovation.”
claims that the company violated competition law Here’s a quick look at some of the other players
with its Android operating system. He was not im- behind the scenes who’ve brought the Justice De-
mediately reached Tuesday. partment and Google to this point:
The company will also be defended by Susan
Creighton, a partner at Wilson Sonsini, who rep- Kent Walker
resented Google through the Justice Department For Google, it all comes back to the company’s
investigation and chairs the firm’s regulatory depart- powerful top lawyer. Walker joined Google in 2006
ment. after working at eBay as the online retailer’s deputy
The Justice Department’s case centers on claims general counsel.
that the company has wielded its vast advertis- In 2018, he was named the tech giant’s senior vice
ing revenue to pay mobile phone manufacturers, president for global affairs, a role that has thrust him
carrier and browsers to have Google as the pre- into Google’s engagement with federal agencies and
set search engine. The lawsuit Congress.
specifically targeted arrange- Walker, along with policy
ments in which Google’s search chief Karan Bhatia and King &
application is preloaded and Spalding partner Alicia O’Brien,
not deletable on mobile phones helped prepare Google CEO
running the company’s Android Sundar Pichai for his appearance
operating system. at a July congressional hearing
Google, in a statement Tuesday, The lawsuit, filed in that also featured Facebook CEO
Washington federal court, Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon CEO
described the Justice Department’s Jeff Bezos and Apple CEO Tim
lawsuit as “deeply flawed” and said is the first to arise out Cook.
it “would do nothing to help con- of a sweeping review of
sumers.” the tech industry that has In a blog post Tuesday, Walker
been divided between the made an initial public defense
For the Justice Department, Justice Department and against the lawsuit, saying that
the lawsuit stemmed from a re-
view Attorney General William Federal Trade Commission. the Justice Department has made
Barr ordered to examine whether “dubious antitrust arguments
tech giants were unlawfully sup- to criticize our efforts to make
pressing competition. Barr, in a Google Search easily available to
statement Tuesday, said the de- people.”
partment’s antitrust division had “Yes, like countless other busi-
collected “convincing evidence” nesses, we pay to promote our
in the last 16 months that “Google no longer services, just like a cereal brand might pay a su-
competes only on the merits but instead uses its permarket to stock its products at the end of a row
monopoly power—and billions in monopoly prof- or on a shelf at eye level. For digital services, when
its—to lock up key pathways to search on mobile you first buy a device, it has a kind of home screen
phones, browsers and next-generation devices, de- ‘eye level shelf.’ On mobile, that shelf is controlled
priving rivals of distribution and scale.” by Apple, as well as companies like AT&T, Verizon,
“The end result is that no one can feasibly chal- Samsung and LG. On desktop computers, that shelf
lenge Google’s dominance in search and search space is overwhelmingly controlled by Microsoft,”
advertising,” he added. “This lack of competition he wrote.
harms users, advertisers and small businesses in the “Our agreements with Apple and other device
form of fewer choices, reduced quality (including on makers and carriers are no different from the

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