'Google is a monopolist,' rules US judge in antitrust case

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US judge Amit Mehta ruled on Monday that Google has violated antitrust law, spending billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly and become the world's default search engine.

In his 277-paged ruling, Mehta said that "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly." This is especially since Google controls about 90% of the online search market and 95% on smartphones.

Google was also accused of paying other companies such as Apple and Samsung to have Google automatically handle search queries on their smartphones and web browsers. In the same ruling, Mehta noted that Google had paid US$26.3 billion in 2021 to ensure that its search engine is the default on smartphones and browsers, and to keep its dominant market share.

Don't miss: Dear Sydney: Google responds to criticised Olympics commercial featuring AI tool Gemini

"The default is extremely valuable real estate," said Mehta. "Even if a new entrant were positioned from a quality standpoint to bid for the default when an agreement expires, such a firm could compete only if it were prepared to pay partners upwards of billions of dollars in revenue share and make them whole for any revenue shortfalls resulting from the change".

In addition, Mehta pointed out that "Google has no true competitor" as it has become the exclusive default search engine on the Safari and Firefox browsers.

“Google, of course, recognises that losing defaults would dramatically impact its bottom line. For instance, Google has projected that losing the Safari default would result in a significant drop in queries and billions of dollars in lost revenues." added Mehta.

When MARKETING-INTERACTIVE reached out, Kent Walker, president of global affairs at Google said: "This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available. We appreciate the Court’s finding that Google is ‘the industry’s highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users,’ that Google ‘has long been the best search engine, particularly on mobile devices,’ ‘has continued to innovate in search’ and that ‘Apple and Mozilla occasionally assess Google’s search quality relative to its rivals and find Google’s to be superior.’ Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal. As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”

The ruling is just one of the many issues Google is currently facing amongst others. Earlier this month, the tech giant landed in hot water over an AI-driven Olympics ad. Titled "Dear Sydney", the ad begins with a father talking about how his daughter has always enjoyed running ever since she was a young child. He goes on to say that he thought she was following in his footsteps as he is a runner as well.

However, he later finds out that his daughter is actually hoping to follow in the footsteps of American hurdler and Olympian Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The father then asks Gemini to help his daughter write a letter telling McLaughlin-Levrone how inspiring she is.

Following the outcry, Google turned off the comments on the YouTube video featuring the ad.

In response, Google said that the ad was done with the goal to create an authentic story celebrating Team USA and that while AI can be a great tool for enhancing human creativity, it can never replace it.

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