Judge Declares Google An Illegal Monopoly In Federal Court

A federal judge in the United States ruled this week that Google has been illegally maintaining its dominance in online searches.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” declared Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the 277-page document published on Monday.

According to the judge’s ruling, Google has been paying billions of dollars to become the world’s default search engine for citizens across the world. The data provided by the judge shows that by 2020 Google held 90% of web searches and 96% on mobile. And, as reported by Reuters, Mehta noted that only in 2021, Google paid $26.3 billion to maintain dominance. In that same year, advertisers paid $150 billion to Google to reach users through its popular browser.

Judge Mehta’s decision represents the Federal Government’s first big win in the modern Internet era. According to Reuters, the verdict comes weeks after finishing hearing arguments from both sides—closing arguments were presented in May this year—. However, the case was filed by the former Trump administration—conducted by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)— years ago, in 2020.

According to the New York Times, this decision will have a major impact on the company and the Big Tech world. “This is the most important antitrust case of the century, and it’s the first of a big slate of cases to come down against Big Tech,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt University to the newspaper.

There’s a high probability that other tech giants will be soon after as well. The Justice Department also sued Apple for making it hard for customers to ditch their devices, and the FTC sued Meta and Amazon for anti-competitive practices.