A US judge on Monday, August 5, declared Google has an ‘illegal’ monopoly over the online search.
According to Reuters, the judge ruled that the search engine company had violated the antitrust law and had spent billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly and to become the default search engine of the world.
The US District Judge Amit Mehta, Washington, D.C., wrote, “The court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”
The Judge noted that Google, which controls 90% of the online search market and 95% of smartphones, paid $26.3 billion in 2021 to make its search engine default on smartphones and browsers and to maintain its dominance on the market share.
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."
The US judge further added, “Google, of course, recognises 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.”
The ruling is marked as the first major success for the US authorities against the alleged monopolies in Big Tech.
