What is the Google 'monopoly' antitrust case about?
Google's payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone web browsers violate US antitrust law, a federal judge ruled on August 5, 2024, handing a key victory to the Justice Department. Judge Amit Mehta in Washington said that the Alphabet Inc. The unit's $26 billion in payments 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. Here's a timeline of the events.
In 2020, the US DOJ hit Google with a lawsuit over its distribution agreement that ensures that the Google search engine is the first or default option that many new device users get. Google pays for this privilege and has shelled out more than $26 billion for it in 2021, according to the court ruling.
After the lawsuit was filed, there was a discovery period that lasted more than two years, and then a nine-week-long bench trial that started in September 2023. The court noted that millions of pages of data, petabytes of data from Google, and high-profile witnesses from the tech world were involved. These included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Apple's SVP of Services, Eddy Cue.
During the proceedings, Google defended the quality of its search engine, while those in opposition claimed that the company's dominance hurt fair competition and discouraged users from exploring alternatives.
On August 5, Judge Mehta ruled that Google was a monopolist. The court ruled that Google had monopoly power in the markets for general search services and general search text ads. It also slammed Google for failing to preserve employees' chat messages that could have served as trial evidence.
The US DOJ hailed the court ruling as a victory for the American people. However, it wasn't entirely a gloomy day for Google. The court stated that Google did not have monopoly power in the search advertising market, and ruled that there was no product market for general search advertising. In addition to this, the court recognized that Google had the “industry's highest quality search engine,” resulting in the “trust of hundreds of millions of daily users.”
Still, Google will likely appeal the decision, and any antitrust remedies could take a long time to be implemented. Now, the search engine giant is preparing to face off against the DOJ in another anti-trust case soon, this time related to its dominance in ad technology.
Script and voice over: Sahana Venugopal
Production: V Nivedita