(Washington) Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Monday that the dominance of Google’s online search engine made it very difficult for rivals to emerge, during a hearing before a U.S. judge tasked with deciding whether Google should success to its popularity or illegal anti-competitive practices.

“You can say [Google] is popular, but to me it’s mostly dominant,” Mr. Nadella told a lawyer for the internet giant during a tense cross-examination.

The boss was called to testify in Washington, as part of the historic trial which opened on September 12 against Google, accused of abuse of a dominant position by the American government.

According to the Department of Justice, the Californian group built its empire through illegal exclusivity contracts with companies such as Samsung, Apple and Mozilla, so that its tool was installed by default on their devices and services, and thus preventing any alternative from emerging.

Since 2009, Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, has been trying to gain market share. Mr. Nadella explained that he believed he could never compete with Google, largely because of his deals with Apple.

Google’s lawyers argue that users can easily switch apps, but that’s a “bogus” argument, according to the IT group’s leader.

“It would be a game changer [for Bing] to be a default tool on Safari,” Apple’s browser, he added.

But Apple rejected Microsoft’s advances. The iPhone maker receives billions of dollars from Google each year, thanks to a generous revenue-sharing deal, previous testimony has revealed.

In this context, “it becomes even more difficult to break through when you don’t have market share,” he said.

Microsoft continued to invest in Bing, hoping for a possible “paradigm shift” or government intervention against Google.

At the start of the year, the company even launched a Bing boosted with generative AI (artificial intelligence), following the success of ChatGPT, the interface of OpenAI, a start-up largely financed by Microsoft.

But despite a certain “exuberance” at the start, Mr. Nadella said he no longer believes that this new technology will challenge Google’s domination of online search.

The executive assured that he now fears that Google will use its dominant position to put pressure on content providers, who are essential for training generative AI models.

“Despite my enthusiasm, I fear that this vicious cycle will become even more vicious,” Mr. Nadella said.