Grandpa Google? Tech giant begins antitrust defense by poking fun at its status among youth

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Google executive testified Thursday that the company’s success is precarious and said its leadership fears their product could slide into irrelevance with younger internet users.

Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s senior vice president for knowledge and information products, testified for the tech giant as it defends itself in the biggest antitrust trial in the last 25 years.

The government has accused the company of illegally thwarting competitors from making inroads against its ubiquitous search engine.

Raghavan downplayed Google’s dominance and described it as a company beset by competitors on all sides.

He said the company has been tagged with the disparaging moniker “Grandpa Google” among younger demographics who don’t see it as an interesting product.

“Grandpa Google knows the answers and will help you with homework,” Raghavan said.

“But when it comes to doing interesting things, they like to start elsewhere.”

The Justice Department has presented evidence that Google secured its dominance in search by paying billions of dollars annually to Apple and other companies to lock in Google as the default search engine on iPhones and other popular products.

A Microsoft executive also testified that Google’s pre-eminent position becomes self-fulfilling, as it uses the data it aggregates from the billions of searches it conducts to improve the efficiency of future searches.