Federal judge rules Google is an illegal monopoly

As Google continues to undermine its revolutionary search engine, a federal judge has ruled that the company’s market dominance is improper. The Washington PostGoogle has illegally abused its power to maintain its massive market share. In other words, (Google “identifies a company that illegally abuses its power to maintain a dominant market position”), “Google is a monopoly,” wrote Judge Amit Mehta of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, “and it operates as a monopoly to maintain its monopoly.”

Putting aside all the obvious, user-specific reasons Google sucks now (ads, lack of accurate and helpful search results, fake summaries that encourage you to eat glue, etc.), the basis of Judge Mehta’s argument is how Google maintains its market share. Ironically, the company doesn’t retain customers by making them complain, “I can’t believe how bad Google is these days.” It’s actually the competition that stifles and blocks Google. Judge Mehta finds that Google’s willingness to pay Apple an estimated $19 billion to make Google the default search engine for Apple products is unconscionable, unfairly tilting market forces in Google’s direction. Mehta also found that despite the lack of real competition (sorry, Bing), Google has consistently and gradually raised prices. By raising prices over a longer period of time, Google has avoided the “pitfalls” of “potential advertiser outrage and bad publicity” because “many advertisers don’t even realize that Google is responsible for the price changes.”

Google, of course, has argued that it succeeds because it’s the best, not because it’s the default on every device people buy. But as any Googler who’s searched on Google in the past year knows, Google doesn’t use Google as well as it used to. Much of that is because Google put its advertising chief, Prabhakar Raghavan, in charge of search, leading to one of those “numbers grow,” “grow at all costs” situations that have created such a balanced economy that we’re suffering. Under the ruling, Google may have to live up to its reputation or find some other way to stifle and limit competition.

A judge has yet to rule on “remedies” for Google’s untenable internet problem. The most likely outcomes include a court block on Google’s search positioning payments to Apple. The Washington Post suggests that users could choose Google as one of several search engines when they fire up their device. Apple may not like losing $19 billion a year, but, uh, who cares? What’s $19 billion to a $3 trillion company? Speaking of the world’s most popular mobile phone company, Apple is also under antitrust investigation, along with several other tech companies, including Amazon and Meta. Oh, no, please leave Facebook alone. It’s our most valuable source of AI-generated images of flight attendants saluting shrimp Jesus. Amen.

This is the first time antitrust law has been used against a major tech platform since Microsoft was deemed a monopoly for forcing users to use Internet Explorer, which is likely a war crime in some countries. So none of this looks too good for Google. The company may be forced to change its practices in a way that doesn’t hurt consumers or competitors. Fortunately, Google is now powered by AI. So we have to ask: Why isn’t Google using Gemini to generate a winning case?