by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – In an important victory for federal authorities taking on Big Tech market control, a district judge in Washington DC has ruled that Google violated antitrust law by creating an illegal monopoly to become the world’s default search engine, Reuters reports.
The case against Google was filed by the Trump administration in 2020 and was heard from September to November last year.
In his ruling Monday, Washington DC District Judge Amit Mehta wrote: “The court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. Google controls about 90% of the online search market and 95% on smartphones.”
Emphasizing that Google spent vast sums of money – $26.3 billion in 2021 alone – to create its monopoly, Mehta wrote: “The default is extremely valuable real estate. Even if a new entrant were positioned from a quality standpoint to bid for the default when an agreement expires, such a firm could compete only if it were prepared to pay partners upwards of billions of dollars in revenue share and make them whole for any revenue shortfalls resulting from the change.”
“Google, of course, recognizes that losing defaults would dramatically impact its bottom line. For instance, Google has projected that losing the Safari default would result in a significant drop in queries and billions of dollars in lost revenues,” Mehta added.
Google is expected to launch appeals in the US Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, and the US Supreme Court if necessary. “The legal wrangling could play out into next year, or even 2026,” Reuters noted in its report.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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