Google violated antitrust laws by building an Internet search empire, a federal judge ruled Monday in a decision that could have major implications for how people interact with the Internet.
Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, a U.S. antitrust law. His decision establishes that Google maintains a monopoly over search services and advertising.
“After carefully considering and weighing the witness testimony and the evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist and has acted as such to maintain its monopoly,” the ruling states.
The ruling is one of the most significant antitrust decisions in decades, ending a case that pitted the Justice Department against one of the world’s most valuable companies. It was also part of a broader effort in recent years by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, as well as European regulators, to scrutinize big tech companies for alleged monopolistic practices.
There was no jury at the trial, which began in September last year before taking a long break for Mehta to consider a decision. Closing arguments wrapped In the first week of May, Mehta concluded the trial by stating that he was aware of the seriousness of the case for both Google and the public.
Google will appeal the decision, according to its president of global affairs, Kent Walker, who in a statement cited parts of the ruling where Mehta described the company’s search engine as superior to its competitors.
“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we should not be allowed to make it readily available,” Walker said.
Mehta on Monday called the proceedings “remarkable” and praised the caliber of attorneys on both sides of the case in his ruling, noting that millions of pages and petabytes of data changed hands during the discovery phase of the case.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland called the ruling “a historic victory for the American people,” adding: “No corporation, no matter how large or influential, is above the law.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the “pro-competition decision is a victory for the American people,” adding: “Americans deserve an Internet that is free, fair and open to competition.”
Government prosecutors argued during the trial that Google illegally monopolized control of the Internet search market, spending tens of billions of dollars each year on contracts with vendors like Apple and Samsung to become the default search engine on their devices. Justice Department lawyers accused Google of using its dominant market position — they said the company controls about 90% of the U.S. search market — to crowd out rivals and boost its own advertising revenue.
According to Mehta’s ruling, these default distribution agreements gave Google an anticompetitive advantage over its rivals, and the company failed to provide valid justifications for those agreements. Google also spent huge sums of money to secure those deals, the ruling noted, paying more than $26 billion in 2021 alone to companies like Apple to become the default search engine on devices.
Mehta’s ruling does not spell out what penalties Google will face for violating antitrust law, leaving big questions about the future of the company’s dominance over the search industry and how it will operate.
Google’s defense relied on the argument that the company simply provides a better service to consumers than other search engines. The company’s lawyers pointed out that products like Microsoft’s Bing are inferior to Google’s and argued that contracts to make Google the default engine on devices did not constitute antitrust violations. They also argued that Mehta should adopt a broader definition of the search market, presenting Google as just one of many services people use to search the internet — one that includes other tech giants like TikTok and Amazon.
Another point of contention during the trial was Google’s history of deleting internal communications and automatically setting its chats to not retain message history. The government alleged that Google was intentionally deleting messages that could be unfavorable to it during the trial, an allegation Google denied. Mehta chided Google’s lawyers during the trial for failing to retain messages and for its lax record-keeping policies.
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“I find it shocking, or surprising, that a company would leave it up to its employees to decide when to retain documents,” Mehta said during closing arguments.
Mehta’s ruling ultimately decided not to penalize Google for failing to preserve employee chat, but said the court was “surprised by the lengths Google goes to to avoid creating a paper trail for regulators and litigants.”
The Justice Department originally filed its lawsuit against Google in 2020, but later joined a broader legal action that included attorneys general from more than three dozen states and territories. During opening arguments, government attorney Kenneth Dintzer declared the trial was about “the future of the internet.”
Much of the trial took place behind closed doors, leading transparency advocates and technology critics to claim that Google was trying to keep the case out of the public debate and stifle media coverage. Google successfully obtained a motion to block public access to evidence and testimony, arguing that doing so could reveal trade secrets.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who was involved in the lawsuit against Google, welcomed the decision on Monday. “This is a huge victory in stopping unchecked corporate power from stifling competition and controlling our data and privacy,” James wrote on X.
The tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department later this year, which will focus on its advertising practices and whether illegally monopolized Key advertising technology.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.