Google just got some major bad news from the US court system today. A judge has ruled that the company has violated antitrust laws with its online search services, stating the company made illegal moves to keep its monopoly on internet search.
The New York Times reported that Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Google tried to keep its massive market share for internet search by paying companies like Apple and Samsung tons of money to make Google the default search engine on their mobile phones. Judge Mehta added in his decision, "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly."
The lawsuit was filed by the US Department of Justice, which led to a 10-week trial beginning in September 2023. The DOJ stated that in addition to payments made to Apple and Samsung, Google also forced other Android-based companies to install certain apps, including Search, before they could fully use Google's Android operating system.
During the trial, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the stand. He testified that the company tried to get Apple to switch its default search engine from Google to Microsoft's Bing for its iPhones. Nadella claimed Microsoft was willing to lose billions of dollars for such an agreement and would have even agreed to hide the Bing brand name in Apple users' search engines.
So far, Google has yet to comment on the ruling by Judge Mehta. The next phase of this court battle will be to set up the remedies that Google will have to deal with to solve the antitrust ruling against it. Some possible solutions include ending the kinds of deals that Google made with companies like Apple and Samsung. Another and more drastic remedy would be for Google's search part to be spun off into its own stand-alone business. Google will almost certainly file an appeal for this decision.
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