Search giant Google has lost a landmark antitrust case after a federal U.S. judge ruled Monday that Google has illegally held a monopoly in search and text advertising.
Filed in 2020, the US government case against the big tech company alleged that Google has kept its share of the general search market by creating strong barriers to entry and a feedback loop that sustained its dominance, CNBC reported. The court found that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which outlaws monopolies, the report added, stating that the ruling marks the first anti-monopoly decision against a tech company in decades.
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in the decision.
The court highlighted Google’s exclusive search arrangements on Android and Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices, saying that they helped to cement Google’s anticompetitive behavior and dominance over the search markets, it said in the ruling. Google spent $26 billion in payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphones and web browsers, as per the court.
Google “enjoys an 89.2% share of the market for general search services, which increases to 94.9% on mobile devices”, the ruling said.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland called the ruling “a historic win for the American people”, adding that “no company – no matter how large or influential – is above the law”.
Google said the company would appeal the ruling.