A federal appellate court ruled that Apple waited too long to seek to intervene in an upcoming antitrust hearing that could end its long-standing search and revenue-sharing partnership with Google, reports MediaPost.
The ruling, issued by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, upholds a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., who said in January that Apple could submit written testimony and file friend-of-the-court briefs, but couldn’t present live testimony or cross-examine witnesses at the hearing, slated to begin in April.
Mehta explained in his ruling that Apple’s motion was untimely and thus he must deny the motion to intervene. He said the tech giant should have known from the outset of the antitrust sui that the suit would “directly affect its contractual rights.”
On Aug. 5, 2024, Mehta ruled that Google had illegally monopolized the search market, “handing the government an epic win in its first major antitrust case against a tech giant in more than two decades. He said that the Alphabet unit’s US$26 billion in payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphones and web browsers effectively blocked any other competitor from succeeding in the market.
Mehta said that Google’s agreements with Apple and other smartphone makers have a “significant effect” maintaining Google’s search monopoly, keeping other search engines from competing and reinforcing Google’s dominant position.
A 2023 New York Times report said Google paid Apple “around $18 billion” in 2021 to be the default search engine in Safari on Macs, iPads, and iPhones. The terms and effects of Apple’s deal with Google have become the centerpiece of the US v. Google trial.
