- Google has suffered a major defeat in a case filed by the US Department of Justice.
- The judge ruled Google guilty of engaging in monopolistic behavior when it paid companies to have its search engine set as the default on devices and web browsers.
- There’s no decision yet on what this will mean for Google’s search business.
Google has suffered a major defeat in court that could change the way it handles its search business. Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Android developer violated US antitrust law in its attempts to stay as the default search engine on devices and web browsers.
Back in 2022, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) accused Google of anticompetitive behavior. The DOJ argued that Google’s practice of paying companies billions to keep Google Search as the default search engine option is an antitrust violation. One of the biggest discoveries from the case was the realization that Google paid Apple as much as $20 billion for that default position while also sharing 36% of its search ad revenue from Safari with Apple.