WASHINGTON: Alphabet’s Google broke the law with monopolistic behaviour over online search and related advertising, a US judge ruled on Monday, the first victory for anti-trust authorities who have filed numerous lawsuits challenging Big Tech’s market dominance.

The decision is a significant win for the Justice Department, which had sued the search engine giant over its control of about 90 per cent of the online search market, and 95 per cent on smart phones.

“The court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” district judge Amit Mehta wrote.

Potential fixes

His ruling against Google paves the way for a second trial to determine potential fixes, such as breaking up the company or requiring the company to stop paying smart phone makers billions of dollars annually to set Google as the default search engine on new phones.

Ultimately, Google will have a chance to appeal the court’s rulings to a district court.

Shares of Google parent Alphabet fell 4.3 per cent on Monday as part of a broad tech share decline.

Mehta noted that Google had paid $26.3 billion in 2021 alone to ensure that its search engine is the default on smart phones and browsers, and to keep its dominant market share.

“The default is extremely valuable real estate... Even if a new entrant were positioned from a quality standpoint to bid for the default when an agreement expires, such a firm could compete only if it were prepared to pay partners billions of dollars in revenue share and make them whole for any revenue shortfalls resulting from the change,” Mehta wrote.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2024