On Monday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled against Google and its parent company, Alphabet, Inc. in a massive antitrust lawsuit first filed by the U.S. Justice Department in 2020.
The ruling comes three months after the two sides presented their closing arguments in early May. It holds that Google is guilty of illegally maintaining a monopoly over internet search and that Google has been exploiting its dominance in the search marketplace to trample competition and innovation.
Mehta’s ruling focused on the tens of billions of dollars Google spends every year to install its search engine as the default option on new cellphones and other tech devices. Those contracts have given Google the scale to block out potential rivals and has led to anticompetitive behavior that must be stopped, according to Mehta.
The ruling is a big win for the Justice Department who has prioritized going after Big Tech and their perceived abuses of their size and influence.
It’s a huge decision that’s bound to shake up the internet as we know it.
Mehta’s decision will no doubt have far-reaching consequences for the internet, internet search, internet marketing, advertising, and more. It’s a giant loss for Google in the country’s biggest antitrust suit in the last 25 years.
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote in his ruling.
Google “enjoys an 89.2% share of the market for general search services, which increases to 94.9% on mobile devices,” the ruling said.
Google had argued that it is as popular as it is because consumers are showing an overwhelming preference for a search engine that is as good as Google’s is. This demand has even led to the word “Google” becoming synonymous with searching the internet. They characterize the situation as responding to consumer demand for a quality product.
Google’s search engine currently deals with an estimated 8.5 billion queries per day, according to a recent study released by the investment firm BOND. It “enjoys an 89.2% share of the market for general search services, which increases to 94.9% on mobile devices,” according to the court ruling.
The antitrust case has depicted Google as a technological giant that has actively thwarted competition to protect a search engine that generated nearly $240 billion in revenue last year. Justice Department lawyers argued that the tech company’s monopoly enabled it to charge advertisers artificially high prices while not having to invest more time and money into improving the quality of its search engine.
In a statement Google said they intend to appeal Mehta’s findings.
What’s next for Google?
Mehta’s guilty verdict sets up the next legal phase to determine what sorts of changes or penalties should be imposed to reverse the damage done and/or to restore a more competitive landscape. He scheduled a hearing on September 6 to begin.
The outcome for Google could take several directions. It could result in an order requiring them to break up or dismantle some of its internet empire, it could prevent it from paying companies to ensure its search engine is the default choice on mobile and other tech devices, or it could have to pay fines and penalties.
The entire process may take months or even years for any potential consequences to play out. At stake however is how search engines are accessed and utilized and how that impacts internet marketing and advertising. Companies such as Microsoft have a lot to gain from the shake up.
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