Google Has Illegal Monopoly Over Internet Search, Judge Rules

A judge has ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation.

In 2023, Google's search advertising business generated more than $175 billion in revenue. I Photo: Scott Roy Atwood Wikimedia Commons

The recent development is a seismic decision that could shake up the internet and hobble one of the world’s best-known companies, Matthew Barakat and Michael Liedtke reported for the Associated Press (AP).

The highly anticipated decision issued by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta comes nearly a year after the start of a trial pitting the U.S. Justice Department against Google in the country’s biggest antitrust showdown in a quarter century.

After reviewing reams of evidence, including testimony from top executives at Google, Microsoft, and Apple during last year’s 10-week trial,

Mehta ruled that “after having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”

Mehta wrote in his 277-page ruling that Google “enjoys an 89.2% share of the market for general search services, which increases to 94.9% on mobile devices.”

For Google, the judge's decision affects a huge profit engine. In 2023, Google's search advertising business generated more than $175 billion in revenue.

Coupled with Google's YouTube ads and Google network revenue, both of which it promotes on its general search engine, advertising accounted for a staggering $237 billion of the company's $307 billion in total revenue.

As of June 2023, Google controlled 91% of the global search engine market across all computing platforms, according to StatCounter. On mobile, Google's market share was even higher at 95%, Alexis Keenan and Daniel Howley reported for Yahoo Finance.