A federal judge ruled on Monday (Aug. 5) that Google acted illegally to control a monopoly in online search.
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in a 277-page ruling.
Google had abused a monopoly over the search business, he said in a landmark decision. His ruling did not, however, include any immediate remedies.
The Justice Department and states accused Google in 2020 of illegally dominating search by paying companies to have it be the default search for smartphones and web browsers. Google earned billions in profits from its search business every year, according to reports.
There are currently antitrust lawsuits against Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
U.S. et al. v. Google wraps a yearlong case that ended with a 10-week trial in 2023. The Justice Department and states sued in 2020 over Google’s dominance in online search, which. The Justice Department said Google’s search engine conducted nearly 90 percent of web searches, a number the company disputed.
Google and its parent, Alphabet Inc., are expected to appeal the decision in a process that could find the case in the U.S. Supreme Court. Google has maintained that the popularity of its search engine was simply due to consumers’ choice and nothing else.
Google’s search engine has a reported 8.5 billion queries daily across the globe, according to reports.