David Pierce

First, Sundar Pichai used Google Plus to explain how the best product usually wins — as an example of a time Google lost. “I think I’m comfortable saying it wasn’t the best product out on the market,” he said. And laughed! A few minutes later, an FTC case against Google’s other terrible social network, Google Buzz, came up as an example of Google being bad for user privacy. Yet another tough day in Google social networking.

Google’s CEO has talked on the stand about Chrome and Chromium, and shouted out RCS and web standards, but he’s also said over and over that if Google is forced to share its search index, search data, and even search results with competitors, it might kill the value of Google Search.