Well, this is groundbreaking. A judge has ruled that Goole is an illegal monopoly:
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” US District Judge Amit Mehta Mehta wrote in Monday’s opinion. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
The decision by the US District Court for the District of Columbia is a stunning rebuke of Google’s oldest and most important business. The company has spent tens of billions of dollars on exclusive contracts to secure a dominant position as the world’s default search provider on smartphones and web browsers.
Those contracts have given it the scale to block out would-be rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo, the US government alleged in a historic antitrust lawsuit filed during the Trump administration.
Now, said Mehta, that powerful position has led to anticompetitive behavior that must be stopped.
Specifically, Google’s exclusive deals with Apple and other key players in the mobile ecosystem were anticompetitive, Mehta said. Google has also charged high prices in search advertising that reflect its monopoly power in search, he added.
Those contracts have long meant that when users want to find information, Google is generally the easiest and quickest platform to go to, which in turn has fueled Google’s massive online advertising business.
While the court did not find that Google has a monopoly in search ads, the broader strokes of the opinion represent the first major decision in a string of US-government led competition lawsuits targeting Big Tech. This case in particular has been described as the biggest tech antitrust case since the US government’s antitrust showdown with Microsoft at the turn of the millennium.
Now you should keep in mind that the judge hasn’t determined what the penalties for this behaviour are going to be. And you can bet that Google will fight this as hard as they can. But I can say one thing, which is that others in the tech space are likely watching this very closely because they could be next.
Related
This entry was posted on August 5, 2024 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
BREAKING: Google Ruled To Be An Illegal Monopoly
Well, this is groundbreaking. A judge has ruled that Goole is an illegal monopoly:
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” US District Judge Amit Mehta Mehta wrote in Monday’s opinion. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
The decision by the US District Court for the District of Columbia is a stunning rebuke of Google’s oldest and most important business. The company has spent tens of billions of dollars on exclusive contracts to secure a dominant position as the world’s default search provider on smartphones and web browsers.
Those contracts have given it the scale to block out would-be rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo, the US government alleged in a historic antitrust lawsuit filed during the Trump administration.
Now, said Mehta, that powerful position has led to anticompetitive behavior that must be stopped.
Specifically, Google’s exclusive deals with Apple and other key players in the mobile ecosystem were anticompetitive, Mehta said. Google has also charged high prices in search advertising that reflect its monopoly power in search, he added.
Those contracts have long meant that when users want to find information, Google is generally the easiest and quickest platform to go to, which in turn has fueled Google’s massive online advertising business.
While the court did not find that Google has a monopoly in search ads, the broader strokes of the opinion represent the first major decision in a string of US-government led competition lawsuits targeting Big Tech. This case in particular has been described as the biggest tech antitrust case since the US government’s antitrust showdown with Microsoft at the turn of the millennium.
Now you should keep in mind that the judge hasn’t determined what the penalties for this behaviour are going to be. And you can bet that Google will fight this as hard as they can. But I can say one thing, which is that others in the tech space are likely watching this very closely because they could be next.
Share this:
Like this:
Related
This entry was posted on August 5, 2024 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.