In a ruling that likely carries big implications for the future of several other Big Tech antitrust lawsuits, a federal judge found Google abused its amassed power to illegally dominate at least two U.S. search and advertising product markets.
U.S. District Judge of the Washington D.C. District Court, Amit Mehta, decided Monday that Google’s attempt to secure exclusive distribution agreements that guaranteed it would be users’ default search engine amounts to monopolistic behavior that deserves rebuke.
By paying smartphone and web browsing companies such as Apple and Samsung tens of billions of dollars, the Alphabet technology company violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which prohibits unfair monopolies, and harmed competitors’ abilities to make gains in both the general search services and general text advertising markets.
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote in the 277-page ruling.
The lawsuit, first brought by former President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice and 11 state attorneys general in 2020, alleged that Google, “one of the wealthiest companies on the planet” with a track record of censorship, became a “monopoly gatekeeper to the internet for billions of users and countless advertisers worldwide.”
“For years, Google has accounted for almost 90 percent of all search queries in the United States and has used anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in search and search advertising,” the DOJ press
