Google C.E.O. Testifies in Ozy Media Founder’s Fraud Trial

Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google, said in a New York courtroom on Friday that he never discussed a possible takeover of Ozy Media.

Mr. Pichai is the highest-profile witness to testify so far in the trial of Carlos Watson, the founder of Ozy who is accused of misrepresenting his company’s financial results, funding and audience data to investors and lenders from 2018 to 2021.

The government alleged in court filings and at trial that Mr. Watson falsely claimed to a prospective investor that Ozy had received a $600 million takeover offer from Google. (While the indictment omitted the name of the company, witnesses and documents presented at trial made it clear that Mr. Watson had referred to the search giant.)

Mr. Pichai said he interviewed Mr. Watson in February 2021 for a full-time role managing Google’s relationships with news publishers. To accept the role, Mr. Watson would have had to step down from Ozy, which Google recognized could harm the digital media start-up, another Google executive testified on Thursday. As part of the hiring discussions, Google considered investing about $25 million in Ozy “to help with the transition,” Mr. Pichai testified when he briefly took the stand.

But Mr. Pichai drew a clear distinction between what Google had actually considered and an outright acquisition of Ozy. He never discussed a possible takeover — and he never floated a $600 million figure, he told a jury on Friday in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York.

Shannon Frison, a defense counsel for Ozy, denied the government’s allegation that Mr. Watson had told an investor about a $600 million takeover offer from Google, calling the claim “unequivocally untrue,” in a statement on Friday.