WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge’s ruling on Monday that Google had operated an illegal monopoly over internet search marked a key moment in one of the largest antitrust cases in the last two decades, but is only another step toward an eventual conclusion.
The case, originally brought under the Trump administration, has methodically marched through three years of discovery, a nine-week trial and two full days of closing arguments, but still has an entire second yet-to-be-scheduled bench trial — dedicated to determining the correct remedy to limit Google’s near-total control in the internet search — and an inevitable appeal on the horizon.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta’s nearly 300-page ruling delved into how Google had shelled out billions to make its search engine the default option on Apple, Android and Mozilla devices, but did not address the appropriate punishment for Google’s monopolist behavior.
However, he sided with Google in finding that it did not have a monopoly over search advertising — the promoted results that appear when users search terms related to shopping, travel and more — and is not liable for actions on its advertising platform SA360.
Google’s dominance has led it to become the colloquial verb for searching on the internet, with nearly 90% of all searches going through Google, and even more on mobile devices at nearly 95%.
Mehta has a range of options that he could apply, such as ordering a breakup of Google into smaller pieces, enjoining problematic conduct like the multi-billion dollar default agreements or simply issuing hefty fines.
Were Mehta to decide that a breakup is necessary, he could separate Google search from the rest of the tech company’s products — which include Android, YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Pixel, Google Chrome and much more — in a major hit to Google and parent company Alphabet.
Such a major breakup would echo the decision U.S. District Judge Thomas Jackson made in June 2000, seven months after initially finding that tech giant Microsoft had operated an illegal monopoly in the web browser market for its Windows operating system and crushed potential competitors.
The Ronald Reagan appointee ordered then that Microsoft be split into two separate businesses, one to produce the operating system and another for Microsoft's other software components.
The decision was immediately appealed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned Jackson’s rulings due to his improperly discussing details of the case with the media during the proceedings, a violation of the code of conduct for judges.
Following the appellate court’s decision, the case was remanded back to federal court in D.C. with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly presiding. Between Jackson’s June 2000 decision and the D.C. Circuit’s June 2001 ruling, the White House changed hands, with George W. Bush taking office.
Under the Bush administration, the Department of Justice backed off from seeking a breakup of Microsoft, and instead sought a lesser penalty. Microsoft then settled and agreed to share its application programing interfaces with other companies, a concession nine states and D.C. saw as too lenient.
Microsoft’s example is the most analogous that Mehta can draw from in Google’s case and may present a path if he determines a breakup is necessary.
A less treacherous path would involve tearing up Google’s default search engine deals with Apple, Mozilla and Android. In 2021, Google paid Apple $26 billion, a sum calculated as a percentage of the advertising revenue Google generates from searches through these defaults.
Mehta pointed out that the $26 billion figure was nearly four times more than all of Google’s search-specific costs combined.
In its current form, when users on each platform begin searching on the internet, they are automatically made through Google’s search engine. Users have the ability to change their default search engine, but must seek it out in their settings.
On Apple’s Safari browser, for example, a user must first go to their settings, find the search section and choose from a list of additional engines like Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia.
Antonio Rangel, a professor of neuroscience and behavioral economics at Caltech, testified during last year’s trial that despite taking just a few steps, each additional input raises the barrier for someone to make a change.
Eliminating the agreements could bring the internet in America more in line with its European counterpart, where in some countries users are presented with a “choice screen” which lists all the available search engines when a user opens an internet browser.
Finally, Mehta can simply order Google to pay large fines for its anti-competitive conduct. Without an American precedent, it is unclear just how much Google could be ordered to pay, but the tech giant has been fined a total of $13.6 billion by the European Union for three separate antitrust violations.
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