Google Broke Antitrust Laws to Hold Online Search Monopoly, Court Rules

August 5, 2024 @ 12:34 PM

For the first time in over 20 years, the American government has won an antitrust claim against a tech giant. A federal judge just ruled that Google did indeed break antitrust laws in an effort to hold their monopoly on Internet searches.

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled on Monday, four years after the Department of Justice’s initial 2020 lawsuits.

Per the 277-page ruling obtained by TheWrap, it is unjust for Google to pay other companies like Apple, Verizon and Samsung to be the automatic search engine for “browser developers, mobile device manufacturers and wireless carriers.” In the coming months, Mehta will provide next steps to fix the monopoly, including potentially selling parts of Alphabet.

The ruling stated that Google is indeed thwarting its competition by paying to be default distribution in the field, an act that violates Section 2 of the 1890 Sherman Act. It also listed Bing as Google’s next biggest competitor, noting that the Nos. 3 & 4 biggest search engines — Yahoo and DuckDuckGo — just get their results from Bing.

Coincidentally, former President Donald Trump publicly spoke out against Google in his livestream with Adin Ross the same day as the ruling, saying, “Something is wrong with Google … everybody should maybe go off Google, not use it.”

In 2001, the United States sued Microsoft for having monopoly of its own, which resulted in the company modifying its business practices. Similar ramifications could now be applied to this Google decision.

The New York Times was first to report the news.