Tech Policy Press - "Google Is A Monopolist" And Other Key Points From Judge Mehta's Ruling

Senior reporter Karina Montoya offers a breakdown of the key points from the recent ruling of Judge Mehta in the trial against Google’s illegal online search and advertising monopoly.

Google holds an illegal monopoly over online search and search text advertising, United States District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta ruled Monday, marking a historic win for the Department of Justice (DOJ) in its first antitrust case against Google. Following a trial that ended in November last year, the case centered around the legality of Google’s exclusive agreements to secure Chrome as the default search engine and leverage that dominance to build its search ad business.

To understand the ripple effects of the ruling, here’s a breakdown of the key points in the 277-page decision:

1. Monopolists can’t buy their way to dominance

By paying other tech firms— including mobile carriers, Android phone manufacturers, and browser operators including Apple and Mozilla— tens of billions of dollars over the years, “Google has obtained a largely unseen advantage over its rivals: default distribution,” reads the ruling. Without this advantage, Google wouldn’t have been able to extract “extraordinary” volumes of personal data to build its Chrome browser, and it would not have been able to squash its rivals in search.

DuckDuckGo, an ads-free and privacy-centered search engine with 2 percent market share in the US, applauded the ruling: “Google has used its monopoly power to block meaningful competition in the search market […] even though DuckDuckGo provides something valuable that people want and Google won't provide — real privacy protection online— Google makes it difficult to use DuckDuckGo by default.”

During closing arguments presented in May this year, Google’s defense had said to the Judge that DuckDuckGo “created competitive pressure” for Google. But Judge Mehta didn’t buy that argument— the ruling notes that there is “little hope that a smaller firm” such as DuckDuckGo could compete with Google.

2. One monopoly can birth more monopolies

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