Google illegally monopolized online search by paying companies like Apple and AT&T to make Google the default search engine on their devices, a federal judge ruled in a landmark antitrust case on Monday.
The decision from U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta is the one of the most significant rulings against a tech giant in the last two decades and could change the workings of a search engine used by billions of people across the globe, The New York Times reported.
“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,” Mehta wrote in his 277-page ruling.
The decision comes nearly a year after the U.S., et al. v. Google case first opened. The Department of Justice had sued Google over its domination of online search, which generates the company billions of dollars in profit.
In 2021, Google spent $23.6 billion to be the default search engine on mobile phones and web browsers, according to reporting from CNBC.
“Google pays billions of dollars each year to distributors — including popular-device manufacturers such as Apple, LG, Motorola, and Samsung; major U.S. wireless carriers such as AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon; and browser developers such as Mozilla, Opera, and UCWeb—to secure default status for its general search engine and, in many cases, to specifically prohibit Google’s counterparties from dealing with Google’s competitors,” the original Justice Departmetn complaint reads.
Such payments, Mehta wrote in the decision, “have given Google access to scale that its rivals cannot match,” making it difficult for other search engines to compete.
Google’s loss is expected to have significant impacts on similar antitrust violation cases against Apple, Meta and Amazon, the Times reported.
The last major antitrust case involving a tech giant was against Microsoft in 2001.