Alphabet, the parent company of Google, violated U.S. law to cement its leadership in online search and related advertising, a federal judge ruled just hours ago in the U.S. Justice Department’s first victory against a monopoly in more than 20 years. a severe penalty that may affect the company’s dominant position in many marketsincluding that of Europe.
District Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling against Alphabet’s main revenue driver, its search engine, sets the stage for a second trial in which possible solutions will be determined, such as Demand that the company stop paying billions of dollars to smartphone manufacturers. every year to set Google as the default search engine on new phones, reports Reuters.
“After carefully reviewing and evaluating the testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist and has acted as such to maintain its monopoly“, the court’s decision strongly states.
A huge market share
Mehta oversaw a 10-week trial in the Google search case last fall, culminating in two days of closing arguments in early May. The trial brought together many top Silicon Valley executivesAmong them are Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
The case is based on the removal of key distribution channels for Google’s competition through exclusion contracts, such as the one they have with the manufacturer Samsung to make your search engine the default on your devices. In addition, Mountain View is making access to the Play Store conditional on manufacturers using Android so that they accept Alphabet applications installed by default on their devices.
In its defense, Google argued that its huge market share is the result of creating a superior product to its competitors and that Users are free to change their default search engine quickly and easily.
Over the months of investigation and at a crucial stage of the trial, it was revealed that Google shared 36% of Safari ad revenue with Apple, which meant the payment of 20,000 million dollars to the Cupertino company.
