Google has lost a major anti-trust lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice. The judge ruled that google illegally abused its monopoly power to ensure it dominated the search engine market.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Google has lost a major antitrust lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice. This is the government’s first major monopoly case to make it to trial in decades – so the first in the age of the modern internet. The judge ruled that Google illegally abused its monopoly power to ensure it dominated the market for search engines. More now from NPR’s Dara Kerr, who’s been following the case. Hey there.
DARA KERR, BYLINE: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: A big victory for the government sounds like a huge upset for Google. You’ve read through the decision. Tell me more about what it says.
KERR: Yeah. So this case was first brought in 2020, and it went to trial last fall. And we’ve been waiting for a ruling for the past three months. And the decision we got today was really a surprise. Judge Amit Mehta started talking about how search engines have, quote, “revolutionized” how we live. And then he wrote that for the last 15 years, one search engine has stood above the rest, and that’s Google. He said that Google’s dominance has gone unchallenged for more than a decade. And after hearing the Justice Department’s case and Google’s defense, he says, quote, “Google is a monopolist” and that, quote, “it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” So the thing is, being a monopoly is not illegal, but what is illegal is using your monopoly power to maintain that dominance. So the judge is basically saying that’s what Google did.
KELLY: And get to specifics. I mean, how is the government saying that Google illegally used its power?
KERR: Yeah. So Google controls about 90% of the search engine market, and the Justice Department says that hurts consumers because it means we don’t have a lot of choice in selecting a search engine. And it also means it’s really hard for rivals to try and enter the search engine market. During the trial, a lot of numbers came out, but the one that caught the most attention was just how much money Google pays device makers like Apple and Samsung to ensure it’s the default search engine on their smartphones and web browsers. So for example, in 2021, Google paid more than $26 billion for this. But Google’s case during the trial was that people choose Google because it’s the best search engine, and people really like it. But obviously, that didn’t seem to convince the judge.
KELLY: Yeah. And how is Google responding to the judge’s ruling?
KERR: I got a comment from one of Google’s executives who said, quote, “this decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available.”
KELLY: Dara, step back. Big picture, how big a deal is this for the tech industry?
KERR: Yeah. This is the first major antitrust lawsuit against a tech company to make it to trial in decades. The last one, if you remember, was Microsoft in the late ’90s, when the internet was in its infancy. So this case against Google is just one of several that the federal government has brought against big tech companies. It’s also sued Apple, Amazon and Facebook. So this ruling could be a forecasting of what’s to come in those other cases.
KELLY: Thank you, Dara.
KERR: Thank you.
KELLY: That’s NPR’s Dara Kerr.
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