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Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have kept a low profile as the Big Tech firm weathers a series of critical antitrust court battles – and it’s part of a long-running pattern of avoiding federal scrutiny, experts say.
The search giant is reeling after a shocking court loss to “Fortnite” maker Epic Games that could upend its lucrative Android app store business. During that trial, US District Judge James Donato slammed what he called a “disturbing” companywide effort to destroy evidence in the high-stakes case.
Google faces yet another looming threat as it awaits a judge’s ruling on the Justice Department case alleging the company has maintained an illegal monopoly over online search. The 10-week trial concluded last month without an appearance by Page and Brin, who created Google’s search tool and held top executive roles as it rose to market dominance.
Instead, Justice Department’s antitrust lawyers grilled a number of current and former executives on Google’s payroll — as well as higher-ups from firms like Apple and Microsoft.
One prominent industry source who has been tracking the proceedings described the Justice Department’s decision not to call the founders to the stand as a “tactical mistake.” The source argued the feds missed an opportunity to grill the notoriously reclusive Page – an enigmatic figure who former friend Elon Musk once claimed has aspirations of becoming a “digital god.”
“Page is extremely creepy and presents poorly,” the source said.
Matt Stoller, a prominent Big Tech critic and director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, said the pair are still “core decision-makers” at Google, regardless of their current title.
“Larry and Sergey have escaped all scrutiny and as far as I can tell, they’re still running the place,” Stoller said.
Representatives for Google and The Justice Department declined to comment.
Lately, Brin and Page have appeared more preoccupied with their personal lives than waging an antitrust battle. Brin recently finalized a high-profile divorce from ex-spouse Nicole Shanahan – during which the latter denied rumors of an affair with Elon Musk – while Page reportedly spent most of the COVID-19 pandemic hunkered down on tropical islands in Fiji.
Judge Amit Mehta is expected to decide whether Google broke antitrust law in mid-2024, with far-reaching consequences for the company and the internet as a whole – as well as personal fortunes of Brin and Page.
Since both are still Google shareholders with vast chunks of their respective net worths tied up in stock, they have a clear financial incentive to steer the company through regulatory headwinds. And despite their absence, there are clear signs Brin and Page are still involved in important company business.
Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that the pair, at CEO Sundar Pichai’s request, had “reviewed Google’s artificial intelligence product strategy” and offered advice to company leaders as the company competed with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
More recently, Brin was listed as a “core contributor” to the white paper for Google’s highly-touted “Gemini” AI product, which was unveiled earlier this month.
The Google trial was the most significant antitrust action of its kind since Microsoft faced a similar challenge two decades ago and another billionaire tech titan was under the public microscope.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the world’s richest person at the time, did not testify at that trial, but the court was shown snippets of a videotaped deposition in which he had previously been slammed for being “evasive and nonresponsive.”
While experts have generally praised the case put forth by the Justice Department’s antitrust team in the Google trial, most believe the company will evade the worst potential outcomes.
The forced breakup of the company would be “drastic remedy” outside of a proposed merger, according to former DOJ antitrust lawyer Sam Weinstein, and observers have suggested Mehta seems more likely to look for a compromise than to order wholesale changes.
Page and Brin were connected to at least one key trial exhibit – a 2007 email chain in which Pichai implored top Google executives to “encourage” Apple to allow customers to choose their preferred search engine. In the same thread, Pichai warned it would make for bad “optics” if Google was “the only provider in the browser.”
In December 2019, Page stepped down as CEO of Google parent Alphabet, while Brin stepped down as president. Page had previously served as Google’s CEO from 1997 to 2001 and again from 2011 to 2015. The duo still maintains seats on Alphabet’s board of directors.
At the time of their resignations, Google already faced major federal probes and mounting Congressional scrutiny, prompting speculation that the executives were looking to avoid the line of fire.
A day after Page resigned, antitrust crusader Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called him out for “retaining effective control” and warned, “We do still expect you to testify before Congress” – though the appearance never happened.
Google also rankled lawmakers in 2018 by blowing off a request for Page or Pichai to attend a hearing about Russian manipulation of tech platforms to interfere in US elections.
The co-founders’ physical absence from the search trial, while notable and surprising to some outsiders, may have made more sense for federal antitrust lawyers aiming to build a laser-focused case about Google’s search business practices, experts told The Post.
“In a case that’s already 10 weeks long, you really want to walk the line between providing enough information and carrying your burden of proof as the government and dragging on and boring the judge,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, an antitrust law expert and professor at Vanderbilt Law School.
“Especially when it’s a bench trial, you don’t want to be in a situation where you’re putting irrelevant proof. You have to pick and choose your strongest witnesses,” Allensworth added.
Rather than question the founders, DOJ attorneys called an array of executives with direct knowledge of Google’s search deals – including Jerry Dischler, Google’s vice president of advertising products, who admitted the company has silently raised ad prices for businesses. Weeks after his testimony, Dischler stepped down, though the company said the exit was his decision.
The feds may also have worried that Brin and Page would dazzle the judge as “the wunderkinds who created this amazing new search tool with which no one can compete,” according to David Olson, a Google trial tracker and associate professor at Boston College Law School.
“Instead of focusing on Brin and Page, who were there when Google was just a scrappy startup building something great, the government may have thought it was better to focus on the current CEO, accusing him and Google of anticompetitive practices now that Google is such a giant force,” Olson said.
Pichai, the most high-profile Google executive to testify, was called to the stand by the company’s own defense team, though he also faced an intense grilling from the feds over the firm’s practice of deleting internal chat logs.
Pichai also was CEO of Google when the Apple deal was most recently renegotiated in 2016 – a key focus of the feds’ case. When asked about Google’s billions in annual spending on the deals, Pichai acknowledged, “we definitely see value.”
The Justice Department has argued that Google has relied on making massive payments to Apple and other firms, including $26.3 billion in 2021 alone, to ensure its search engine came installed by default on most phones. Google, which controls approximately 90% of the online search market, argues the deals were fair compensation to partners and a sign of fierce competition in the industry.
“If the CEO says something, he’s speaking for Google, whereas if Larry Page says something, you have to prove he’s speaking for Google – even though everyone knows he is,” Stoller said. “Just as a tactical matter, I can understand why they wouldn’t want to prioritize that.”
“It’s more about winning the case than embarrassing powerful people.”
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