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- cross-posted to:
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Google has violated US antitrust law with its search business, a federal judge ruled Monday, handing the tech giant a staggering court defeat with the potential to reshape how millions of Americans get information online and to upend decades of dominance.
“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” US District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in Monday’s opinion. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
The decision by the US District Court for the District of Columbia is a stunning rebuke of Google’s oldest and most important business. The company has spent tens of billions of dollars on exclusive contracts to secure a dominant position as the world’s default search provider on smartphones and web browsers.
Those contracts have given it the scale to block out would-be rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo, the US government alleged in a historic antitrust lawsuit filed during the Trump administration.
So what will the “staggering” and “stunning” penalty be?
A fine the equivalent of half a day’s profits?
A mandate with no enforcement mechanism?
A mournful head shake from Susan Collins?
Biden reportedly calling them assholes behind closed doors?
Last time there was this type of ruling it had quite profound industry wide effects
Wasn’t that the EU, though? They tend to be many times better at punishing huge corporations than US district courts ever were…
No I’m talking about last time it happened in the US. Over two decades ago. On microsoft.
Ah ok. As you point out yourself, that was over two decades ago. A lot of enshittification of the courts have happened since then…
Antitrust charges relate to the state of a business, not just an action like false advertising or IP infringement.
Companies have been forced to divest departments or assets as a result of something like this.