Google loses antitrust trial, declared a “monopolist”

What happened

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled Monday that Google illegally operated a monopoly in the internet search industry. The sweeping antitrust decision followed a 10-week trial in which the Justice Department found that Google used its dominant market position to unfairly stifle competition at the expense of consumers, advertisers and rival search engines.

Who said what

“Google is a monopoly and it operates like a monopoly to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta said. The decision is a “serious blow” to the “foundation of the Google empire,” he told Yahoo Finance. It is also a “huge victory for the Justice Department and could have huge implications” for other major tech companies.

Mehta’s ruling “focused on the billions of dollars Google spends each year to install its search engine as the default option on new cellphones and tech gadgets,” the Associated Press reported. Those deals with other tech giants gave Google “the scale to block potential rivals” like Bing and DuckDuckGo, CNN reported.

Attorney General Merrick Garland called the ruling “a historic victory for the American people.” Google’s global president, Kent Walker, said Mehta’s ruling “recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but says we shouldn’t be able to easily share it.”

What’s next?