Google Search has put the world’s information at the fingertips of over a billion people. Our engineers work to offer the best search engine possible, constantly improving and fine-tuning it. We think that’s why a wide cross-section of Americans value and often love our free products. 

Today’s lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed. People use Google because they choose to, not because they're forced to, or because they can't find alternatives. 

This lawsuit would do nothing to help consumers. To the contrary, it would artificially prop up lower-quality search alternatives, raise phone prices, and make it harder for people to get the search services they want to use.

The Department's dubious complaint

Let's talk specifics. The Department's complaint relies on dubious antitrust arguments to criticize our efforts to make Google Search easily available to people. 

Yes, like countless other businesses, we pay to promote our services, just like a cereal brand might pay a supermarket to stock its products at the end of a row or on a shelf at eye level. For digital services, when you first buy a device, it has a kind of home screen “eye level shelf.” On mobile, that shelf is controlled by Apple, as well as companies like AT&T, Verizon, Samsung and LG. On desktop computers, that shelf space is overwhelmingly controlled by Microsoft. 

So, we negotiate agreements with many of those companies for eye-level shelf space. But let's be clear—our competitors are readily available too, if you want to use them. 

Our agreements with Apple and other device makers and carriers are no different from the agreements that many other companies have traditionally used to distribute software. Other search engines, including Microsoft’s Bing, compete with us for these agreements. And our agreements have passed repeated antitrust reviews. 

Here's more detail:

Apple devices

Changing your search engine in Safari is easy. On desktop, one click and you’re presented with a range of options.

Apple’s iPhone makes it simple to change your settings and use alternative search engines in Safari—and it’s even easier in iOS14 where you can add widgets from different providers or swipe on the home screen to search.

Microsoft

Google doesn't come preloaded on Windows devices. Microsoft preloads its Edge browser on Windows devices, where Bing is the default search engine.

Android

On Android devices, we have promotional agreements with carriers and device makers to feature Google services. These agreements enable us to distribute Android for free, so they directly reduce the price that people pay for phones. But even with these agreements, carriers and device makers often preload numerous competing apps and app stores.

Look how easy it is to add a different search app or widget on Android.

The bigger point the lawsuit misses 

The bigger point is that people don’t use Google because they have to, they use it because they choose to. This isn’t the dial-up 1990s, when changing services was slow and difficult, and often required you to buy and install software with a CD-ROM. Today, you can easily download your choice of apps or change your default settings in a matter of seconds—faster than you can walk to another aisle in the grocery store. 

This lawsuit claims that Americans aren’t sophisticated enough to do this. But we know that’s not true. And you know it too: people downloaded a record 204 billion apps in 2019. Many of the world's most popular apps aren't preloaded—think of Spotify, Instagram, Snapchat, Amazon and Facebook.

The data shows that people choose their preferred service: take Mozilla’s Firefox browser as an example. It’s funded almost entirely by revenue from search promotional agreements.  When Yahoo! paid to be the default search engine in Firefox, most Americans promptly switched their search engine to their first choice—Google. (Mozilla later chose Google to be its default search provider, citing an “effort to provide quality search” and its “focus on user experience.”)

It’s also trivially easy to change your search engine in our browser, Chrome.

How people access information today

Next steps

We understand that with our success comes scrutiny, but we stand by our position. American antitrust law is designed to promote innovation and help consumers, not tilt the playing field in favor of particular competitors or make it harder for people to get the services they want. We’re confident that a court will conclude that this suit doesn’t square with either the facts or the law. 

In the meantime, we remain absolutely focused on delivering the free services that help Americans every day. Because that’s what matters most.

You can learn more about our approach to competition at g.co/competition.

Google Search has put the world’s information at the fingertips of over a billion people. Our engineers work to offer the best search engine possible, constantly improving and fine-tuning it. We think that’s why a wide cross-section of Americans value and often love our free products. 

Today’s lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed. People use Google because they choose to, not because they're forced to, or because they can't find alternatives. 

This lawsuit would do nothing to help consumers. To the contrary, it would artificially prop up lower-quality search alternatives, raise phone prices, and make it harder for people to get the search services they want to use.

The Department's dubious complaint

Let's talk specifics. The Department's complaint relies on dubious antitrust arguments to criticize our efforts to make Google Search easily available to people. 

Yes, like countless other businesses, we pay to promote our services, just like a cereal brand might pay a supermarket to stock its products at the end of a row or on a shelf at eye level. For digital services, when you first buy a device, it has a kind of home screen “eye level shelf.” On mobile, that shelf is controlled by Apple, as well as companies like AT&T, Verizon, Samsung and LG. On desktop computers, that shelf space is overwhelmingly controlled by Microsoft. 

So, we negotiate agreements with many of those companies for eye-level shelf space. But let's be clear—our competitors are readily available too, if you want to use them. 

Our agreements with Apple and other device makers and carriers are no different from the agreements that many other companies have traditionally used to distribute software. Other search engines, including Microsoft’s Bing, compete with us for these agreements. And our agreements have passed repeated antitrust reviews. 

Here's more detail:

Apple devices

Changing your search engine in Safari is easy. On desktop, one click and you’re presented with a range of options.

Apple’s iPhone makes it simple to change your settings and use alternative search engines in Safari—and it’s even easier in iOS14 where you can add widgets from different providers or swipe on the home screen to search.

Microsoft

Google doesn't come preloaded on Windows devices. Microsoft preloads its Edge browser on Windows devices, where Bing is the default search engine.

Android

On Android devices, we have promotional agreements with carriers and device makers to feature Google services. These agreements enable us to distribute Android for free, so they directly reduce the price that people pay for phones. But even with these agreements, carriers and device makers often preload numerous competing apps and app stores.

Look how easy it is to add a different search app or widget on Android.

The bigger point the lawsuit misses 

The bigger point is that people don’t use Google because they have to, they use it because they choose to. This isn’t the dial-up 1990s, when changing services was slow and difficult, and often required you to buy and install software with a CD-ROM. Today, you can easily download your choice of apps or change your default settings in a matter of seconds—faster than you can walk to another aisle in the grocery store. 

This lawsuit claims that Americans aren’t sophisticated enough to do this. But we know that’s not true. And you know it too: people downloaded a record 204 billion apps in 2019. Many of the world's most popular apps aren't preloaded—think of Spotify, Instagram, Snapchat, Amazon and Facebook.

The data shows that people choose their preferred service: take Mozilla’s Firefox browser as an example. It’s funded almost entirely by revenue from search promotional agreements.  When Yahoo! paid to be the default search engine in Firefox, most Americans promptly switched their search engine to their first choice—Google. (Mozilla later chose Google to be its default search provider, citing an “effort to provide quality search” and its “focus on user experience.”)

It’s also trivially easy to change your search engine in our browser, Chrome.

How people access information today

Next steps

We understand that with our success comes scrutiny, but we stand by our position. American antitrust law is designed to promote innovation and help consumers, not tilt the playing field in favor of particular competitors or make it harder for people to get the services they want. We’re confident that a court will conclude that this suit doesn’t square with either the facts or the law. 

In the meantime, we remain absolutely focused on delivering the free services that help Americans every day. Because that’s what matters most.

You can learn more about our approach to competition at g.co/competition.

As a soldier who had the honor of serving his country, I know that some war wounds are not as visible as others. The mental anguish many veterans suffer is not as readily diagnosed and effectively treated as physical wounds that leave scars. Nevertheless, they can be just as lasting. 

Veterans can miss out on getting mental health treatment out of fear of being stigmatized or simply not knowing who to turn to. Studies have shown that around 20 percentof veterans who served in operations in Iraq now suffer from PTSD, a condition exacerbated today by the challenges presented by a global pandemic, with a 20 percent spike in military suicides in 2020 alone. Further, a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Public Health shows over 1.1 million veterans treated in the VA between 2010 and 2011 were diagnosed with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, substance abuse disorder, or schizophrenia. 

The anguish of these struggles is felt in many ways. A veteran suffering from mental health issues has a higher chance of becoming homeless, and of being unemployed. The anxiety of not knowing when the next paycheck will come can serve to further exacerbate the mental health issues a person might be facing. We can—and must—do more to help. 

We can begin by destigmatizing mental illness and making resources available to our veterans and their families. Alongside a community of veterans, Google has launched a new veterans’ wellness website, Serving Veterans. This new hub will provide up-to-date, authoritative information about the mental health issues uniquely experienced by our veterans—which we hope will lessen the stigma and isolation associated with so many of these diagnoses. 

There are many organizational and logistical barriers to care but we want veterans to know that it is honorable and expected to receive help. That’s why this new hub combines destigmatizing messaging from a diverse chorus of military leaders reiterating the importance of seeking help—alongside mental health resources, including online and local support from helpful nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping veterans and their families. The hope is that increasing the visibility and availability of these resources will reduce the barriers to access for the people seeking them. 

This issue won’t be easy to solve. Moving forward, we hope that more tools like this become available. And we hope that by combining the tools and skills of the private sector with the resources of government and veterans' own unique perspectives, we can find even greater solutions.

As a soldier who had the honor of serving his country, I know that some war wounds are not as visible as others. The mental anguish many veterans suffer is not as readily diagnosed and effectively treated as physical wounds that leave scars. Nevertheless, they can be just as lasting. 

Veterans can miss out on getting mental health treatment out of fear of being stigmatized or simply not knowing who to turn to. Studies have shown that around 20 percentof veterans who served in operations in Iraq now suffer from PTSD, a condition exacerbated today by the challenges presented by a global pandemic, with a 20 percent spike in military suicides in 2020 alone. Further, a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Public Health shows over 1.1 million veterans treated in the VA between 2010 and 2011 were diagnosed with depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, substance abuse disorder, or schizophrenia. 

The anguish of these struggles is felt in many ways. A veteran suffering from mental health issues has a higher chance of becoming homeless, and of being unemployed. The anxiety of not knowing when the next paycheck will come can serve to further exacerbate the mental health issues a person might be facing. We can—and must—do more to help. 

We can begin by destigmatizing mental illness and making resources available to our veterans and their families. Alongside a community of veterans, Google has launched a new veterans’ wellness website, Serving Veterans. This new hub will provide up-to-date, authoritative information about the mental health issues uniquely experienced by our veterans—which we hope will lessen the stigma and isolation associated with so many of these diagnoses. 

There are many organizational and logistical barriers to care but we want veterans to know that it is honorable and expected to receive help. That’s why this new hub combines destigmatizing messaging from a diverse chorus of military leaders reiterating the importance of seeking help—alongside mental health resources, including online and local support from helpful nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping veterans and their families. The hope is that increasing the visibility and availability of these resources will reduce the barriers to access for the people seeking them. 

This issue won’t be easy to solve. Moving forward, we hope that more tools like this become available. And we hope that by combining the tools and skills of the private sector with the resources of government and veterans' own unique perspectives, we can find even greater solutions.

Google’s free products like Search, Maps and Gmail help millions of Americans and we’ve invested billions of dollars in research and development to build and improve them. We compete fairly in a fast-moving and highly competitive industry. We disagree with today’s reports, which feature outdated and inaccurate allegations from commercial rivals about Search and other services.  

Americans simply don’t want Congress to break Google’s products or harm the free services they use  every day. The goal of antitrust law is to protect consumers, not help commercial rivals. Many of the proposals bandied about in today’s reports—whether breaking up companies or undercutting Section 230—would cause real harm to consumers, America’s technology leadership and the U.S. economy—all for no clear gain. 

We support Congress focusing on areas where clearer laws would help consumers, a few of which are mentioned in today’s reports: Google has long championed the importance of data portability and open mobile platforms; we are arguing a case before the Supreme Court tomorrow for the important principle of software interoperability; and we have urged Congress to pass comprehensive federal privacy legislation. We look forward to engaging with Congress on these and other issues moving forward.

You can read about our approach to competition at g.co/competition.

Open software interfaces have been an integral part of the innovation economy. They enable the interoperability that has always let software developers build on each other’s work. And the interoperability of open software interfaces is what lets different technologies like apps work together on a variety of devices and platforms: That’s why you can take a photo on an Apple phone, save it onto Google’s cloud servers, and edit it on a Surface tablet. Our legal case with Oracle turns on our belief that interoperability has been good for innovation, good for developers, and good for consumers.

The Supreme Court has heard from 250 leading computer scientists, businesses, and software developers who share this conviction. The Court also recently asked for additional information about how courts should respect a jury’s decision that a given use (like the reuse of software interfaces) constitutes allowable fair use. 

Today, we filed a supplemental brief explaining how the jury in our case heard from over a dozen witnesses, reviewed hundreds of documents, and then unanimously agreed with our position. America’s Constitution enshrines the right to a jury trial. The Supreme Court has recognized the important role of a jury in deciding nuanced, fact-specific questions like the ones in this case.

A decision in Oracle’s favor would limit consumers’ freedom to use technologies on a range of devices. It would upend the way developers have always used software interfaces, locking them into existing platforms and giving copyright owners new power to control the building blocks of new technologies. And it would erode the traditional role of the jury in evaluating all the facts relevant to a decision.  

We look forward to making this case to the Court on October 7.

Editor’s Note: Today the CEOs of Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook are testifying before the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. Read our CEO Sundar Pichai’s opening testimony below, describing how Google’s free products are helpful to people and small businesses, and how competition inspires us to innovate and create better products for everyone. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, and members of the Subcommittee. Before I start, I know this hearing was delayed because of the ceremonies to honor the life of your colleague, Representative John Lewis. Because of his courage, this world is a better place. He’ll be deeply missed. 

At its heart, a discussion about competition is a discussion about opportunity. This has never been more important, as the global pandemic poses dual challenges to our health and our economy.  

Expanding access to opportunity through technology is personal to me. I didn’t have much access to a computer growing up in India. So you can imagine my amazement when I arrived in the U.S. for graduate school and saw an entire lab of computers to use whenever I wanted. 

Accessing the internet for the first time set me on a path to bring technology to as many people as possible. It inspired me to build Google’s first browser, Chrome. I’m proud that 11 years later, so many people experience the web through Chrome, for free.

Google takes pride in the number of people who choose our products; we’re even prouder of what they do with them … from the 140 million students and teachers using G Suite for Education to stay connected during the pandemic ... to the 5 million Americans gaining digital skills through Grow with Google … to all the people who turn to Google for help, from finding the fastest route home to learning how to cook a new dish on YouTube. 

Google’s work would not be possible without the long tradition of American innovation, and we’re proud to contribute to its future. We employ more than 75,000 people in the U.S. across 26 states. The Progressive Policy Institute estimated that in 2018 we invested more than $20 billion in the U.S., citing us as the largest capital investor in America that year, and one of the top five for the last three years.

One way we contribute is by building helpful products. Research found that free services like Search, Gmail, Maps, and Photos provide thousands of dollars a year in value to the average American. Many are small businesses using our digital tools to grow:

• Stone Dimensions, a family-owned stone company in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, uses Google My Business to draw new customers. 

• Gil’s Appliances—a family-owned appliance store in Bristol, Rhode Island—credits Google Analytics with helping them reach customers online during the pandemic. Nearly one-third of small business owners say that without digital tools they would have had to close all or part of their business during COVID. 

Another way we contribute is by being among the world’s biggest investors in research and development. At the end of 2019, our R&D spend had increased tenfold over 10 years, from $2.8 billion to $26 billion, and we’ve invested over $90 billion over the last five years. Our engineers are helping America remain a global leader in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, and quantum computing. 

Just as America’s technology leadership is not inevitable, Google’s continued success is not guaranteed. New competitors emerge every day, and today users have more access to information than ever before. Competition drives us to innovate, and it also leads to better products, lower prices and more choices for everyone. For example, competition helped lower online advertising costs by 40 percent over the last decade, with savings passed down to consumers. 

Open platforms like Android also support the innovation of others. Using Android, thousands of mobile operators build and sell their own devices, without paying any licensing fees to us. This has enabled billions of consumers to afford cutting-edge smartphones, some for less than $50. Whether building tools for small businesses or platforms like Android, Google succeeds when others succeed. 

Competition also sets higher standards for privacy and security. I’ve always believed that privacy is a universal right, and Google is committed to keeping your information safe, treating it responsibly, and putting you in control, and we’ve long supported the creation of comprehensive federal privacy laws.

I’ve never forgotten how access to technology and innovation changed the course of my life. Google aims to build products that increase access to opportunity for everyone—no matter where you live, what you believe, or how much money you earn.  

We are committed to doing this responsibly—in partnership with lawmakers—to ensure every American has access to the incredible opportunity technology creates.

Thank you.