Google ‘is a monopolist’ in search, US judge rules in antitrust case

Google is in deep trouble after a federal judge ruled that the company illegally abused a monopoly over the search industry. The ruling follows a 10-week trial held in 2023 that stemmed from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice and several states.

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia said, according to The New York Times. Mehta has not imposed any remedies on Google at the time of writing. The judge may order Google to change how it operates or even sell parts of its business.

The lawsuit claimed that Google illegally acted to maintain its dominant position in search through a number of actions, such as paying Apple, Samsung and Mozilla billions of dollars per 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 that by paying to be the default option, it prevented rivals from achieving the kind of scale needed to compete.

Engadget has contacted Google for comment.

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