If Google suddenly had real competition in search, how would news publishers’ world change?

Google’s on trial in Washington, D.C. Not metaphorically, either: A federal court is almost halfway through what’s expected to be 10 weeks of testimony on whether Google’s search dominance is a violation of U.S. antitrust law. The primary issue involves Google’s multi-billion-dollar deals with browser makers — the ones that make Google their users’ default search engine — and whether they are an unfair barrier to competition. ...

How will Judge Amit Mehta rule once all the testimony is in? Who knows? But there is, for the first time in a long while, a distant twinkling of a possibility that Google’s search dominance could take a meaningful dent.

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