Federal Court Judge Rules Google Is an Illegal Monopoly and Violated Anti-Trust Laws By Abusing Their Search Monopoly

A federal judge ruled on Monday that Google illegally monopolized the search market and violated anti-trust laws.

The ruling by Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia marks the first anti-monopoly decision against a tech company in decades.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey celebrated the court order ruling today.

BREAKING: We have obtained a court order ruling that Google is an unlawful monopoly.

This is a HUGE win, especially as Google continues to censor conservative voices.

I am moving forward undeterred in the fight to protect all Missouri consumers.

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) August 5, 2024

This appears to be good news. Anytime Google loses the people generally win.

Here is a copy of the 286 page court ruling.

Bloomberg reported:

Google illegally monopolized the search market through exclusive deals, a judge ruled Monday, handing the government a win in its first major antitrust case against a tech giant in more than two decades.

Judge Amit Mehta in Washington said that the Alphabet Inc. unit’s $26 billion in payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphones and web browsers effectively blocked any other competitor from succeeding in the market.

“Google’s distribution agreements foreclose a substantial portion of the general search services market and impair rivals’ opportunities to compete,” Mehta said in a 286-page ruling.

By monopolizing distribution on phones and browsers, Google has been able to consistently raise the prices of online advertising without consequences, Mehta said.

“The trial evidence firmly established that Google’s monopoly power, maintained by the exclusive distribution agreements, has enabled Google to increase text ads prices without any meaningful competitive constraint,” he wrote.

Antitrust enforcers alleged that Google has illegally maintained a monopoly over online search and related advertising. The government said that Google has paid Apple, Samsung Electronics Co. and others billions over decades for prime placement on smartphones and web browsers. This default position has allowed Google to build up the most-used search engine in the world and fueled more than $300 billion in annual revenue largely generated by search ads.

For those interested, we covered this case against Google in-depth last year with @matthewstoller, one of the country’s most knowledgeable anti-trust specialists (starts at 50:00 mark)https://t.co/vVzZd1LaMG

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 5, 2024

Wired magazine reported: