Google is now 0 for 2 in antitrust lawsuits. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled Monday that Google has illegally maintained its dominance in search by using anticompetitive agreements to prevent rivals from gaining ground.
The ruling follows a weeks-long trial in Mehta’s court in Washington, D.C., last year in which the U.S. Justice Department alleged that Google had become the world’s most-used search engine by paying partners like Apple and Samsung to promote it on their devices and software. Google had attributed its success to providing the best service and argued that it faced significant competition from companies like Microsoft and others.
Metha sided with Google on some issues, but rejected its general argument that the company did not have an illegal monopoly. Last year, a jury in a federal court in San Francisco had ruled that Google’s Play app store was an illegal monopoly.
How Google will have to adjust its business in light of the rulings in San Francisco and Washington is yet to be determined. Mehta will hold a separate trial to determine damages in the search case, and a judge is considering proposed penalties in the Play litigation. But some changes Google has made in response to antitrust scrutiny in recent years have been costly.
Google and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
The case before Mehta dates back to the heightened oversight of the tech industry under then-President Donald Trump. The Justice Department sued Google in 2020, before Trump left office, and the suit became the first of several against big tech companies to go to trial.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
