Google acted illegally in order to maintain a monopoly in online search, a US judge said in a ruling- a landmark decision against the tech giant which is likely to fundamentally change the way the company works. Judge Amit Mehta said that Google abused a monopoly over the search business in a case in which the US Justice Department and states sued the company accusing it of illegally fortifying its dominance by paying other companies like Apple and Samsung, billions of dollars a year to use Google for search on smartphones and web browsers.
Read more: Google illegally maintains monopoly over internet search, US judge rules
The ruling noted, “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly" and is likely to influence other government antitrust lawsuits against Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook's owner Meta. The last significant antitrust ruling against a tech company targeted Microsoft more than two decades ago.
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It was earlier reported that Google spends billions of dollars annually to be the automatic search engine on browsers like Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. The New York Times reported that Google paid Apple about $18 billion for being the default in 2021.
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What Satya Nadella said during the trial?
During the trial, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that he was concerned about Google's dominance and how it had created a “Google web” and that its relationship with Apple was “oligopolistic.” He said that if Google continued undeterred, it was likely to become dominant in the race to develop artificial intelligence.
{{/usCountry}}During the trial, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that he was concerned about Google's dominance and how it had created a “Google web” and that its relationship with Apple was “oligopolistic.” He said that if Google continued undeterred, it was likely to become dominant in the race to develop artificial intelligence.
{{/usCountry}}What Sundar Pichai said during the trial?
In his testimony, CEO Sundar Pichai said that Google created a better service for consumers. The company argued in the ruling that users choose to search on Google because they find it useful. John Schmidtlein, Google’s lead courtroom lawyer, said, “Google is winning because it’s better."
But the US government argued that Google had a monopoly over general online search services and its agreements to be the automatic search engine on devices and web browsers hurt competition. These agreements “have given Google access to scale that its rivals cannot match,” Judge Amit Mehta wrote in the ruling.