Google loses legal battle against DOJ and has to wear the illegal monopoly dunce cap

Google just lost the most important legal battle of its life, a fight against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) which started in 2020 where the DOJ claimed that Google violated antitrust law and cheated on monopoly. The government called Google a filthy monopolist who uses illegal tactics to crush competition and stifle innovation. Despite Google's lawyers clapping back, calling these claims outrageous and salacious, the judge agreed with the feds that Google was guilty.

Google buying over companies to extend monopoly

For the past decade, Google's name has been synonymous with search engines. According to reports, almost 90% of the US online search market is controlled by Google, with only a small remainder of the pie left for competitors. But as it turns out, Google only managed to hold this monopoly through striking exclusive contracts with companies such as Apple and Samsung, which enabled Google to be the default search engine on their platform.

Holding this monopoly over search engines has allowed Google to gather all the user data that it needs to improve on its Google algorithm to make the Google search engine the best search engine out there. Conversely, Google's monopoly also deprives competitors of the information that they needed to make their search engines good enough to compete with Google. This ultimately creates a vicious cycle that further strengthens Googles monopoly over the sector.

Google forced to let go of its monopoly

Right now, we still do not know what kind of punishment Google and its parent company, Alphabet, would face. But it is very likely that they would be hit with both monetary penalties and enforced mitigations aimed at reducing its dominance. Offenders of anti-trust laws often aren't punished with just paying fines as it does not demonstrate long term impacts, especially for a multi-trillion company like Google.

Rather, the fine would be enforced with certain mitigations such as choice screen, which would allow users to pick between other available search engines instead of having Google as their default search engine. But this isn't the first time Google has been found guilty of breaching antitrust laws. Over the past decade, it has been fined a total of 8.25 billion by the European Union for three separate breaches of the Union's antitrust laws.

Good news for internet users?

This ruling, alongside with other EU rulings, may be the first steps towards opening the tech market up to other competitors. This, in turn, may promote a more equitable competition, which would be a win for consumers. With greater competition, it would fuel better innovations. When there is only one option available, the incentive for innovation would often be suffocated under the dominance of one monopolistic player. But as this lawsuit is bound to continue for years to come, consumers might not see a change so soon yet.

Google acting as a precautionary tale for other big businesses

While we won't see an immediate change to our phone's default search browser just yet, this case will definitely have a huge impact on the internet and the way that big companies operate.

Google's case would act as a precautionary tale for companies like Apple and Amazon to reevaluate their business model to see if they are doing anything similar to Google and whether they should make changes for fear of being sued for monopolisation.