The Microsoft C.E.O. found that the power of Search is not as strong as it could be

The U.S. et al v. Google case kicks off on the witness stand in early morning Google-Google retaliation

Mr. Nadella’s appearance on the witness stand in the case — U.S. et al v. Google, which is the first monopoly trial of the modern internet era — was also a sign that the bitter rivalry between Microsoft and Google continues unfettered. In more than two decades, the two companies have battled over everything from online search, mobile computing and web browsing to cloud computing and dueled in many legal battles. The companies are fighting over A.I.

“Despite my enthusiasm that there is a new angle with A.I., I worry a lot that this vicious cycle that I’m trapped in could get even more vicious,” Mr. Nadella said.

Regulators around the world have been working to limit the power of companies like Amazon, Apple and Meta which own social media sites like Facebook. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission accused Amazon of breaking antitrust laws by squeezing merchants on its site. The F.T.C. has also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Meta, claiming it snuffed out nascent rivals, and the Justice Department has sued Google in a second case over its control of online advertising.

Nadella, in a dark blue suit, took the stand early Monday morning after a few minutes of scheduling updates and a delay long enough that Judge Amit Mehta asked jokingly, “Mr. Nadella didn’t go back to Seattle, did he?” Questions started from a lawyer at the Department of Justice.

Google Changes Search Engines to Generate More Commercial Results: a Tale of a Twisted Shopping Mall and a Times Squared

Schmidtlein argued that search engines have a huge and growing list of competitors. An idea was largely dismissed by Nadella. “I’m not interested in competing with TikTok,” said the same man who once nearly acquired TikTok. The man laughed in response. “We’ll see how that goes.”

Even though Windows market share numbers say something, Nadella thinks that defaults matter a lot in a big way. He said that the only argument against the idea was that users don’t switch. Apple Maps started out bad but has gained market share in the last 10 years because it is on every phone. “People use it — it’s the default,” he said.

There is a slide that says “semantic matching” to the changes made to the results of its search queries. If you enter a query you will likely receive a search engine that uses text phrase pairings in the process of natural language processing. But this overhaul went further, actually altering queries to generate more commercial results.

There have long been suspicions that the search giant manipulates ad prices, and now it’s clear that Google treats consumers with the same disdain. The 10 blue links, which are organic results, are just another example of Google greediness, camouflaged in the company’s kindergarten colors.

Billions of times a day, Google changes queries in billions of different variations. Here is how it works. Say you are looking for children’s clothing. Google converts it, without your knowledge, to a search for “NIKOLAI-brand kidswear,” making a behind-the-scenes substitution of your actual query with a different query that just happens to generate more money for the company, and will generate results you weren’t searching for at all. It’s not possible for you to opt out of the substitution. If you don’t get the results you want, and you try to refine your query, you are wasting your time. This is a twisted shopping mall you can’t escape.

Why would Google want to do this? If the generated results are shopping related, your subsequent behavior will be similar to a candy display at a grocery store. Second, that latter query will automatically generate the keyword ads placed on the search engine results page by stores like TJ Maxx, which pay Google every time you click on them. It’s a guarantee to line the pockets of the company.

It is a guaranteed way of damaging everyone except the people of Google. This system reduces search engine quality for users and drives up advertiser expenses. The company has effectively captured more than 90 percent of the market share because the manipulations are imperceptible to the user and advertiser.