Google is a monopoly, US federal court rules

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta on Monday ruled that Google operated an illegal monopoly in the web search industry. The ruling, reported by The New York Times, puts an end to years of lawsuits by the Department of Justice and state governments that accused Google of distorting the market with unfair practices, most notably Google’s practice of paying companies like Apple, Mozilla and Samsung to make its search tool the default in web browsers, making it harder for competitors like DuckDuckGo and Bing to gain traction.

Related

We tested seven alternatives to Chrome to see which one is best

If Chrome feels like a vampire sucking data from your computer, there are alternative browsers out there. We tried out these seven to see which one is best.

The suit dates back to 2020 and culminated in a 10-week trial in 2023 that included testimony from Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Nadella complained that Google’s relationship with Apple was “oligopolistic” and that Google could easily gain an advantage in the AI ​​world with Gemini, even though Microsoft has an advantage due to its partnership with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. Google reportedly paid Apple $18 billion in 2021 alone to remain the default search option in Safari, which exposes iPhone users to Google’s ads and other services.

Google’s defense was that it was successful because its technology was superior. But prosecutors argued that Google was collecting the consumer data it needed to bolster its own position while preventing competitors from scaling up. They also accused the company of artificially inflating advertising rates beyond what would exist in a free market. In fact, Google is a major player in online advertising, and it makes most of its money that way, not from devices, subscriptions, or cloud servers.