WASHINGTON (AP) — The judge overseeing a pivotal antitrust trial focused on whether Google is stifling competition and innovation has repeatedly indicated he believes it would be difficult for a formidable rival search engine to emerge. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta went back and forth Thursday with Google’s lead litigator, John Schmidtlein, during the first day of the trial’s closing arguments, questioning whether another company could amass the money and data needed to develop a search engine that could eventually compete against Google. Google reaped an operating profit of nearly $96 billion last year, mostly by selling digital ads — a market that it also dominates largely because it controls about 90% of the U.S. internet search market.
