The founder of DuckDuckGo says that Google's deals with phone companies hurt competitors

DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg testified Thursday in the largest antitrust trial in 25 years that Google's deals with phone companies and equipment manufacturers to make its product the default search option on so many devices made it hard for his small search engine company to compete.

“We hit an obstacle with Google’s contracts,” Weinberg told the U.S. District Court in Washington.

The U.S. Department of Justice claims that Google has stifled competition by paying Apple and Verizon to make its search engine the default on many laptops and cellphones. Google claims it dominates internet search because their product is better. 

Even though it's the default on smartphones and other devices, Google claims consumers may switch to competing search engines with a few clicks.

“Search defaults are the primary barrier,” he said. There are too many steps.

The MIT graduate founded DuckDuckGo in his Pennsylvania home in 2008, naming it after a kiddie game. After a few years, the company began positioning itself as a search engine that respects customers' privacy by promising not to track their searches or locations. Weinberg suggested using tracking data to develop detailed user profiles and "creepy ads."

His words: "People don't like ads that follow them." He said DuckDuckGo's internal surveys suggest customers prioritize privacy over search results.

DuckDuckGo is privately owned and doesn't reveal its finances. However, it claims to be profitable for several years and generate over $100 million in sales.

Weinberg testified Thursday that DuckDuckGo handles 2.5% of U.S. searches.

Eric Lehman, a former Google software engineer, seemed to question one of the Justice Department's main claims: that Google's dominance is entrenched because it collects massive amounts of user click data and uses it to improve future searches faster than competitors.

Lehman said machine learning has advanced fast in recent years to the point that computers can evaluate content without user click data.

Lehman stated in a 2018 court email that Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Baidu, Yandex, and startups might utilize machine learning to improve internet searches and challenge Google's lead.

“Unsupervised learning of raw text can largely replace huge amounts of user feedback,” he wrote.

Lehman predicted in court Thursday that search engines will rely more on machine learning than user input.