Judge calls Google a ‘monopolist,’ rules against it in antitrust case

A U.S. judge ruled that Google violated antitrust law with its attempts to stay as the default search engine. Google, unsurprisingly, plans to appeal.

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” wrote Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a 277-page ruling. The ruling caps a multi-year case that saw the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and states sue Google, accusing it of illegally maintaining its dominant position by paying other companies to be the default option.

As the legal battle played out, we learned that Google pays Apple and Samsung billions of dollars each year to have its search engine in the default position. In Apple’s case, Google paid as much as $20 billion USD (roughly $27.5 billion CAD) to be the default on Apple devices. Additionally, Google shared 36 percent of its search ad revenue from Safari with Apple.

Mehta agreed with the DOJ that Google’s actions qualify as monopolistic behaviour and that Google collected data to ensure Search’s dominance. Moreover, Mehta agreed that Google protected its monopoly with the ads that appear in Search results.

In a statement posted on Twitter/X, Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs at Google, said:

“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available. We appreciate the Court’s finding that Google is ‘the industry’s highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users,’ that Google ‘has long been the best search engine, particularly on mobile devices,’ ‘has continued to innovate in search’ and that ‘Apple and Mozilla occasionally assess Google’s search quality relative to its rivals and find Google’s to be superior.’ Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal. As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”

While it remains to be seen how things play out in the appeal process, the ruling will likely have significant impacts on Google and other tech companies (like Apple, which could lose out on that sweet, sweet Google search money). But as The Verge points out, it could be years before we know the full impact of the ruling. The process of determining remedies for Google’s illegal conduct will start next month, which Google will likely fight extensively. And then there’s still the appeal, and possibly more appeals after that (the Associated Press suggested it could take as long as five years). So, changes are coming… just not for a while.

Source: Android Authority, New York Times