Gabriel Weinberg, founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo Inc., spoke in federal court on Thursday about the “obstacle” Google’s exclusive contracts posed for his company in pitching browsers to make DuckDuckGo their default search engine for private browsing modes.
DuckDuckGo, a privacy-centric search engine that competes with Google, had presented its search engine as an alternative for private browsing modes in other browsers, according to Weinberg’s testimony.
The Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys general have accused Google of violating antitrust law through the use of exclusionary contracts to secure its position as the default search engine on browsers like Apple’s Safari and on phones using Google’s Android operating system.
“We thought it was a compelling pitch to browsers,” said Weinberg in response to questioning by a Justice Department attorney.
DuckDuckGo’s own research has revealed that many consumers are unaware that private browsing modes do not offer as much tracking protection as they expect. Weinberg stated that his company had shared this information with browser makers, presenting DuckDuckGo as a solution to this problem.
“We extensively presented our pitch,” said Weinberg, but encountered difficulties due to existing contracts between companies and Google.
In the end, DuckDuckGo concluded that “it was a challenging endeavor,” Weinberg stated.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment on the testimony.
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