US Judge Rules Google Broke Antitrust Laws; Potential Breakup Ahead

An article in The Economic Times reported that a US judge has ruled that Google broke anti-trust laws by using billions to create an illegal monopoly as the globe’s universal search engine.

The decision clears the way for a new trial on remedies, which could theoretically see Alphabet—Google’s parent company—split apart. The consequence could reshape the market for online advertising, which has been predominantly in Google’s hands over the past several years. It could herald the go-ahead to very active antitrust policies being devised around Big Tech, to which all streams are contributing in the US.

The “remedy” stage alone might last years by itself, followed by appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and finally the U.S. Supreme Court. That fight could spill well into next year — maybe even 2026.

“The court finds the following: Google is a monopolist, and it has taken anticompetitive actions to maintain its monopoly,” wrote U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C. Quite expectedly, Google commands about 90 percent of online search on computers and 95 percent of search on smartphones.

The Google search case was brought in 2020 and represented the first time in a generation that the U.S. government had accused a major firm of maintaining an illegal monopoly.