Google Broke Antitrust Law With Search Monopoly, Says Federal Court Judge

A federal court has found that Google used its market power illegally to suppress competition in internet search. The biggest triumph for the Justice Department in more than two decades in limiting the power of Big Tech companies dominance over the huge markets.

Google has maintained its monopoly

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. The District Court for the District of Columbia said in his judgment.

Judge Mehta ruled that Google violated antitrust law by making restrictive contracts with Apple and other phone makers that required them to install Google as the default search engine on smartphones. He also criticized other practices of the Alphabet Inc. unit that prevented the fair competition.

“This victory against Google is a historic win for the American people. No company — no matter how large or influential — is above the law. The Justice Department will continue to vigorously enforce our antitrust laws,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland

“We shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that the ruling supporters President Biden and Vice President Harris’s belief that the internet should be more competitive and said, “The Biden-Harris agenda is building an economy that ensures entrepreneurs and small businesses have a fair shot at the American Dream.”

Google argued that its search engine faces competition from people looking for information in other places, such as on Amazon, TikTok, and Reddit, and increasingly chatbots like ChatGPT. 

“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” Walker said. “Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal.”

Key statements made by Judge Mehta 

“Google, of course, recognises that losing defaults would dramatically impact its bottom line. For instance, Google has projected that losing the Safari default would result in a significant drop in queries and billions of dollars in lost revenues.”

“The distribution agreements have caused a third key anticompetitive effect: They have reduced the incentive to invest and innovate in search.”

“Google has not achieved market dominance by happenstance. It has hired thousands of highly skilled engineers, innovated consistently, and made shrewd business decisions. The result is the industry’s highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users.”

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