Federal Judge Rules Google’s Search Option Is An Illegal Monopoly

This may shake some things up online....

A judge ruled Google’s search engine was an illegal monopoly after finding it forced its dominance to diminish competition and limit innovation, The Associated Press reported.

The decision was handed down by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Aug. 5 after a year-long legal battle between the internet conglomerate and the U.S. Justice Department for what’s been labeled as the country’s biggest antitrust showdown in 25 years.

Mehta reviewed evidence, including testimony from top executives at Google, Microsoft, and Apple, during a ten-week trial in 2023 and finally ruled, following both sides presenting closing arguments in May 2024. “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 a 277-page ruling.

He continued, claiming Google’s dominance in the search market is evidence of it being a monopoly by enjoying “an 89.2% share of the market for general search services, which increases to 94.9% on mobile devices.”

The judge’s ruling could cause a shift on the internet and hinder one of the world’s favorite companies and its parent, Alphabet Inc. The parent company argued that Google’s popularity strictly came from consumers, who have a desire to use it as their trusted search engine. With the search engine being so good at its job, the company feels it has become synonymous with finding things online.

The search engine processes approximately 8.5 billion queries per day worldwide, which is almost double its day-to-day volume from 12 years ago. However, Mehta’s ruling was geared toward the billions of dollars Google spends per year to install the search engine as the default option on new cellphones and other tech gadgets.

Back in 2021, Google spent over $26 billion in efforts to lock in default agreements.

While Google defended those accusations by noting that consumers tend to change their search engines, Mehta said trial evidence showed that Microsoft’s Bing search engine holds an 80% share of the search market on the Microsoft Edge browser. If Google was not locked in as the predetermined option, the numbers show other search engines have the range to be successful.

According to The Guardian, Google’s President of Global Affairs, Kent Walker, said the company is planning to appeal the decision. “This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” Walker said.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland called the ruling a major victory as antitrust regulators at the Justice Department, who filed a lawsuit while Donald Trump was still in office, have been revving up efforts to combat Big Tech’s power under President Joe Biden’s administration. “This victory against Google is a historic win for the American people,” Garland said.

“No company — no matter how large or influential — is above the law. The Justice Department will continue to vigorously enforce our antitrust laws.”

While the ruling has the room to change the status of internet searches, it does not state what penalties Google will face for violation of antitrust laws, which could open the door for questions about the future of the company’s dominance over the search industry and its operations.