US v. Google antitrust trial: updates

It’s Internet Explorer day in US v. Google!

We’re a bit over an hour into Sundar Pichai’s testimony in US v. Google, and we’ve spent a surprising amount of the morning in a time machine back to 2005.

That’s when Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 (the browser a Pichai-led team would ultimately crush by launching Google Chrome). At the time, Google’s legal chief David Drummond sent Microsoft a letter that was very mad about search defaults. Drummond wanted a choice screen, and said Google was very worried about the anticompetitive nature of Microsoft prioritizing its own search engine.

Pichai is being asked a lot of questions that amount to, “this is now the argument against you, right?” So far, he’s sparring with it pretty well.