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A judge presiding over Google's antitrust case said she would require complainants to submit more realistic details and evidence in order for the lawsuit to proceed. Recently, Google has been receiving a barrage of attacks from regulators accusing the internet company of violating antitrust laws.
The lawsuit filed by several companies, supposedly claims that Google requires all phones running under the Android platform to make Google's produced applications its default apps. This move restricts opposing apps like Microsoft's Bing on Android devices. Consumer groups claims that these restrictions raise the market prices of smartphones because of a lack of competition for premium placement within the phones screen.
U.S. Federal Court District Judge Beth Labson Freeman at a hearing on Thursday examined the theory presented and said that additional details needs to be added in order for the lawsuit to proceed. The judge is concerned about the damages presented by the complainants therefore requiring more evidences to be presented before she can decide whether the complaints have merits for a class-action lawsuit. The judge is giving the plaintiffs time to gather up evidence to support their case otherwise the judge will be forced to dismiss the case on accounts of insufficiency of evidence presented.
Google on the other hand wants the class action to be dismissed in the grounds of lack of evidence. According to Google they are not giving restrictions to phone manufacturers about giving priority to their applications and making it the phones default applications. However, the plaintiffs countered that argument claiming that most consumers doesn't know how to switch the default settings on their phone, or in general doesn't want to hassle themselves in going into trouble setting default applications.
Google also claimed that phone makers have not opened up the idea of migrating into a different search engine. In response, the plaintiffs asked that Google documents should be examined in order to prove if that is true. Unfortunately for the complainants, US law mandates that the plaintiffs needs to present substantial evidence to support their case before a further investigation can proceed.
