(Washington) Called to the stand Tuesday to testify in the trial against Google, a senior Apple official assured that the famous search engine was, in his opinion, the best product for users of its smartphones.

A historic trial opened on September 12 against the internet giant, accused of abuse of a dominant position by the American government.

According to the Department of Justice, Google built its empire through illegal exclusivity contracts with companies such as Samsung, Apple and Mozilla to have its tool installed by default on their devices and services, thereby preventing any alternative to emerge.

“I don’t think there’s anyone that’s as good as Google at online search,” Eddy Cue, an Apple vice president, told the court.

“There was no viable alternative to Google at the time. And we never really considered choosing another one,” he added.

Mr. Cue was referring to a series of deals that began in 2002: Google paid Apple billions of dollars for prime placement on its electronic devices.

The deal was updated in 2016 so that the iPhone maker would receive a greater share of Google’s advertising revenue derived from its search engine, through Safari, Apple’s internet browser.

Mr Cue’s testimony was only briefly public, before continuing behind closed doors as companies feared sharing sensitive data.

Google has ten weeks of hearings to try to persuade Federal Judge Amit Mehta that the government’s accusations are unfounded.

This is the first time that US prosecutors have taken on a major technology company head-on since Microsoft was targeted more than two decades ago over the dominance of its Windows operating system.

The trial should help determine whether Google owes the success of its search engine to its performance or to anti-competitive practices.

Hearings have already revealed that Google pays $10 billion to Apple and other companies each year to secure its status as the default search engine on phones and web browsers.