The DOJ has made a decision about Google’s search engine and whether it is a monopoly. The Justice Department says Google spends a lot of money every year to push its own search engine and keep its competitors from coming in.
Google has said over and over that they are not doing anything wrong and are not trying to be the only company that does this. According to Google’s lawyer John Schmidtein, “It would be an unprecedented decision to punish a company for winning on the merits.”
The lawyer for the Justice Department said that Google’s actions that made them think it might be a monopoly are similar to those taken by Microsoft in a different monopoly case. Judge Amit Mehta heard the last arguments from a group of states and the Justice Department. He or she now has to decide if Google broke the law.
The main issue in the case was Google’s choice to make deals with other companies, like Apple, to make Google the main search engine on their products. According to the proof that was shown in court, Google pays around $20 billion a year for these kinds of contracts.
Google made the case that people can choose which search engine to use and put on their phones. They said that Google’s success comes from the fact that people really do pick them over other companies.
They also said the government isn’t looking at all kinds of search engines, such as social media sites like Facebook and TikTok as well as websites like Yelp, Airbnb, and Amazon.
Mehta wasn’t sure if all of these businesses were really in the same group. They talked about how social media sites can show ads based on a person’s interests and how Google can show ads based on a person’s straight queue.
Then Mehta said, “It’s only Google where we can see that directly declared intent.”
