Federal Judge Decides Google To Violate US Antitrust Law

JAKARTA - After several trials, Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia finally decided that Google had monopoly on the search engine business.

Google is a monopoly company, and Google acts as a company that maintains its monopoly. Google has violated Article 2 of Sherman's Law," Judge Mehta said in the ruling.

In the result of the 277-page ruling, the Department of Justice and the state sued Google and accused it of acting illegally in strengthening its dominance, by paying companies like Apple and Samsung billions of US dollars per year, to make its search engine a default on their devices and browsers.

Here’s our statement on today’s decision in the DOJ case:“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available. We appreciate the Court’s finding that Google is ‘the industry’s highest quality…

— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) August 5, 2024

Here's our statement on today's decision in the DOJ case: This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concentrate that we shouldn't be allowed to make it effectively available. We appreciate the Court's finding that Google is the industry's highest quality...

The DOJ argues that Google has facilitated nearly 90 percent of web searches and that by paying to be the default option, Google prevents its competitors from reaching the scale needed to compete.

For this reason, Google's DOJ is finally considered to benefit in terms of revenue and data collection. Because according to Mehta, the more users, the more advertisers enter

Distribution agreements also benefit Google in other important ways. The more users it means the more advertisers, and the more advertisers it means the more income," he explained.

And as a default search, Google finally receives billions of queries every day through these access points. Google obtained user data in incredible quantities from the search.

"Google then uses this information to improve the quality of the search," he continued.

Responding to DOJ's decision, Kent Walker, President, Google's Global Affairs said on X that they would appeal the decision to Court.

We appreciate the Court's finding that Google is the industry's highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of users every day, that Google has long been the best search engine, particularly on mobile devices, 'continue to innovate in search' and that 'Apple and Mozilla sometimes judge Google's search quality compared to its competitors and think Google is the best.'

Because during the trial, Google argued that its significant market share was caused by better products appreciated by consumers.