Google has violated US antitrust law with its search business, a US federal judge has ruled, handing the department of justice one of its biggest victories in more than two decades in limiting the power of Big Tech companies.

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” judge Amit P. Mehta of the US district court for the District of Columbia wrote in his 277-page ruling. The judgment has the potential to upend decades of dominance but the game is far from over.

Google will appeal

Google, which handles around 90 per cent of online queries, made around $175 billion in revenue from its search-based advertising last year, accounting for more than half its $307 billion total revenue. The company has argued its success has much to do with the quality of its product. In comparison, Microsoft’s Bing commands less than 5 per cent market share.

The department of justice alleged that Google has illegally maintained a monopoly over online search and advertising connected with it. It said that the company paid Apple, Samsung and others over the years for prime placement on smartphones and
web browsers.

The 52-year-old judge’s ruling is around the company’s liability and not remedies. Kent Walker, president of global affairs at Google parent Alphabet, said the company would appeal while pointing out in a statement: “This decision recognises that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it
easily available.”

George Hay, a law professor at Cornell University, who was the chief economist for the justice department’s antitrust division for most of the 1970s, has told Associated Press that the appeals process could take as long as five years during which Google may fend off courts from banning default search agreements.

Mehta’s decision after a 10-week trial last year comes at a crucial time as Google will go to trial against the department of justice once again, in fall, over a separate challenge of its advertising technology business.

Apple AI focus

Alphabet paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 for Google to be the default search engine in the Safari browser, according to unsealed court documents in the antitrust lawsuit.

For Apple, this is a substantial amount in its revenue stream but the iPhone maker has been quietly shifting away from its dependence on traditional Internet search. The Tim Cook-led company has spent a considerable amount of time revamping its Siri digital assistant and integrating AI chatbots into its software. The company will roll out Apple Intelligence, a suite of AI-powered tools, in the coming weeks to the general public. The judgment may also offer Apple an opportunity to reach new nonexclusive agreements with AI providers.

Microsoft lessons

The last major US court ruling on a tech antitrust case was in the 1990s against Microsoft. Mehta has leaned into the framework of the US versus Microsoft case but Google has argued that it has maintained consistent actions before and after it became dominant in the market.

Back then, a district court judge had initially ruled against Microsoft on several counts of possible antitrust violations and even ordered a breakup of the company, but an appeals court reversed some of the key decisions and ultimately, President George W. Bush’s administration settled with the company in 2001.

Mehta power

Judge Amit P. Mehta is no stranger to antitrust cases. In 2014-15 he had to deliver on a matter involving Sysco, a leading US distributor of food to restaurants and cafeterias, and the Federal Trade Commission.

Born in Patan, Gujarat, he arrived in the US at the age of one with his father, Priyavadan Mehta, an engineer, and mother, Ragini Mehta, a laboratory technician. They settled in suburban Baltimore.

In 2014, the Obama administration nominated him to be a federal judge, and he was assigned the Google case in October 2020.