Google anti-trust trial spotlights internal dispute over algorithm vs data

What is more important to a successful online search business: the computing algorithm that decides what results to display or the data that tracks the results of user clicks?

Even within Alphabet Inc.’s Google, the world’s largest search engine, that question has been hotly debated for years. And now it’s a key feature in a landmark antitrust trial, where the US Justice Department claims Google spends billions of dollars to stifle competition and preserve its monopoly over online search.

Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian, who testified during the first days of the trial this week and has been a key spokesman since 2002,