Google Search Is an Illegal Monopoly, US Judge Rules

Google is now 0 for 2 in antitrust trials. US District judge Amit Mehta ruled on Monday that Google has unlawfully maintained its dominance in search by using anticompetitive deals to keep rivals from gaining traction.

The ruling follows a weekslong trial in Mehta’s Washington, DC, courtroom last year in which the US Department of Justice alleged that Google had become the world’s most used search engine by paying partners such as Apple and Samsung to promote it on their devices and software. Google had attributed its success to providing the best service and argued that it faced significant competition from the likes of Microsoft and others.

Metha sided with Google on some issues but rejected its overall argument that the company held no illegal monopoly whatsoever. Last year, a jury in federal court in San Francisco had ruled Google’s Play app store an illegal monopolist.

How Google will have to adjust its business in light of the judgments in San Francisco and Washington are yet to be determined. Mehta will hold a separate trial to determine remedies in the search case, and a judge is mulling proposed penalties in the Play litigation. But some changes Google has made in response to antitrust scrutiny in recent years have been costly.

Google and the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

The case before Mehta traced back to the increased oversight of the tech industry under then President Donald Trump. The Justice Department sued Google in 2020 before Trump left office, and the lawsuit then became the first of several against Big Tech companies to go to trial.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.