Google is in deep trouble after a federal judge ruled that the company was illegally abusing its monopoly over the search industry. The decision is made after a 10-week trial Held in 2023 stemmed from it 2020 claim Filed by the Department of Justice and several states.
Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said, “Google is a monopoly, and it has acted as a company to maintain its monopoly.” wrote in the decision. “It violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
Mehta has not applied any tools to Google at the time of writing. A judge could order Google to change how it operates or even sell part of its business.
The lawsuit alleged that Google acted illegally to protect its dominant search position through a series of actions. It pays companies like Apple, Samsung and Mozilla billions of dollars a year to be the default search engine on their phones and web browsers. The DOJ argued that Google facilitates almost 90 percent of web searches, and by paying to be the default option, prevents competitors from gaining the scale they need to compete. Thus, Google benefits both in terms of revenue and data collection.
“Those search entry points are pre-configured with the ‘default’ search engine,” the ruling said. “The default is extremely valuable real estate. Google receives billions of queries every day through these entry points because many users simply stick to the default search. Google obtains an extraordinary amount of user data from such searches. It then uses this data to improve search quality.”
According to Mehta, Google has acknowledged that losing its position as the default search engine on various platforms will hurt its bottom line. “For example, Google predicted this loss Safari default will lead to a significant reduction in inquiries and billions of dollars in lost revenue,” the judge declared.
During the trial, Google claimed that a significant part of its market share was due to having a better product that consumers appreciated. Mehta is expected to appeal the decision.
Engadget has reached out to Google for comment.
In addition, the DOJ alleged that Google has a monopoly over the ads that appear in search results. He argued that Google was artificially inflating the prices of ads beyond what they would be on the free market.
In his ruling, Mehta agreed that “Google exercised its monopoly power by charging anticompetitive prices for generic search text ads. This conduct allowed Google to make monopoly profits.” However, the judge added that Google does not have monopoly power in the broader market for search ads.
Meanwhile, Mehta refused to sanction Google not being able to protect chat messages of employees could be related to this case. The decision states that since 2008, Google has deleted chat messages between its employees by default after 24 hours.
“The court’s failure to sanction Google should not be construed as consenting to Google’s preservation of evidence of conversations,” Mehta wrote. “Any company that puts the onus on its employees to identify and preserve relevant evidence does so at its own peril. Google escaped sanctions in this case. It may not be so lucky next time.”
Google and the DOJ are ready for it back in federal court in September in the ad tech case.
