Google created hurdles to protect smartphone foothold, small search firm says

"As for the second company? That's one you might not have heard of before called Branch Metrics. This afternoon, we heard testimony from the company's founder Alex Austin, who served as its CEO until only a few months ago.

At the beginning of his testimony, Austin described the initial mission that Branch focused on: building a search engine for apps that would allow users to pull up specific app pages from search queries through "deep linking" technology. For example, if you searched for "Pizza" on a Branch-integrated search bar, you would get results that brought you directly to pizza-related pages on apps you might own like Yelp or UberEats, as well as suggestions for apps that you hadn't yet downloaded.

Austin thought this technology would create a win-win-win. Phone manufacturers and carriers could add another feature to their phones that would not only enhance the user experience but also create a new source of ad revenue, and app developers would get a new way to grow and distribute their apps outside of crowded app stores.

But Austin and his team soon discovered a familiar barrier: Google's search engine default agreements. According to Austin, every single potential partner that he pitched Branch to turned it down for the same reason. Their contract with Google wouldn't allow it.

Branch pivoted by developing an "offline" device search. This was apparently the only way that phone manufacturers like Samsung could implement Branch without violating their revenue share agreements (RSAs) with Google, which he understood to require that Google be the only "web-connected" search function pre-loaded onto a device.

This offline search was a severely limited version of Branch's initial product. According to Austin, it also meant that Samsung restricted Branch to searching a pre-set list of about 25 apps, because Samsung needed to be able to manually verify that none of the deep links to those apps connected to the web. These restrictions were mandated after Branch had already made huge investments in developing the technology and code to deep link hundreds of apps."

https://www.bigtechontrial.com/p/a-tale-of-two-software-comp...

Can someone post the original documents or transcriptions? I did check https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18552824/united-states-... but there’s nothing there, hopefully I’m looking at the right lawsuit.

Sounds like Google is getting punished for being a more open ecosystem than Apple.

I'm sure if this leads to any action, Apple will feel like opening up further. /s