Google has an illegal monopoly on search, judge rules. Here’s what’s next

Google has violated US antitrust law with its search business, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing the tech giant a staggering court defeat with the potential to reshape how millions of Americans get information online and to upend decades of dominance.

“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,” US District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in Monday’s opinion. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”

The decision by the US District Court for the District of Columbia is a stunning rebuke of Google’s oldest and most important business. The company has spent tens of billions of dollars on exclusive contracts to secure a dominant position as the world’s default search provider on smartphones and web browsers.

Those contracts have given it the scale to block out would-be rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo, the US government alleged in a historic antitrust lawsuit filed during the Trump administration.

Now, said Mehta, that powerful position has led to anticompetitive behavior that must be stopped.

Specifically, Google’s exclusive deals with Apple and other key players in the mobile ecosystem were anticompetitive, Mehta said. Google has also charged high prices in search advertising that reflect its monopoly power in search, he added.

‘Definitely a landmark’

Monday’s decision against Google will likely be remembered in the same breath as other major antitrust cases throughout history, some antitrust experts said. That list includes the breakup of AT&T’s telephone monopoly and Standard Oil, as well as Microsoft’s illegal bundling of its Internet Explorer web browser with Windows.

Possible penalties

Mehta’s decision is expected to trigger a separate proceeding to determine what penalties Google will face. Together with Google’s coming appeal, the entire process may take months or even years for any potential consequences to play out. The ruling could possibly:

• upend how Google makes its search engine available to users, by impacting its ability to make the pricey deals with device makers and online service providers that were at the heart of the case.
• the court could force Google to implement a “choice screen” letting users know about other available search engines,
• The company is also likely to face a monetary fine,
• US antitrust officials also did not rule out the possibility of a Google breakup,

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