US judge rules that Google acted illegally to monopolise online search

Google has acted illegally to maintain its monopoly on online search and advertising, a US judge has ruled in a court case brought by the US Department of Justice.

The process began in 2020 when the DOJ sued the company for its control of 90% of the online search market.

During a 10-week trial in Washington DC, prosecutors said Google had paid more than $10 billion (£7.8 billion) a year to Apple, Samsung and Mozilla to be pre-installed as the default search engine across platforms.

Prosecutors said that, as a result, other companies had not had the opportunity or resources to compete with Google.

It is unclear what penalties Google and parent-company Alphabet will face, with fines set to be decided at a future hearing.

In his ruling, US District Judge Amit Mehta wrote: “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”

In response, Alphabet said: “This decision recognises that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available.”

During the trial, Google’s lawyer John Schmidtlein said that Google was winning “because it’s better”.

Mehta’s ruling contradicted that, however, stating that if “new a entrant [was] positioned from a quality standpoint to bid for the default”, they would have to pay partners “upwards of billions of dollars in revenue share”.

Alphabet plans to appeal against the ruling.

Google UK has been contacted for comment.