US court rules Google is monopolist in antitrust case

A US court has found that search engine giant Google was exercising monopoly by illegally exploiting its dominance of the market to crush competition.

It comes as the US works to reign in Big Tech companies, with several other lawsuits filed against major firms.

What do we know about the ruling?

"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 Court Judge Amit Mehta wrote in his ruling.

He said Google "has a major, largely unseen advantage over its rivals: default distribution."

Google "enjoys an 89.2% share of the market for general search services, which increases to 94.9% on mobile devices," according to the ruling.

Mehta ruled that Google was also using its dominance to stifle innovation.

The case is considered the country's biggest antitrust confrontation in some 25 years. It pits the tech giant against the US Justice Department.

"This victory against Google is an historic win for the American people," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

Google said that it would appeal the decision.

"This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn't be allowed to make it easily available." Kent Walker, Google's president of global affairs, argued.

The Google search engine, which is owned parent company Alphabet Inc, currently processes an estimated 8.5 billion queries per day.

US cracks down on Big Tech

The case against Google was the first of five major lawsuits by the US government to reach trial. Cases against Meta, Amazon and Apple and a separate case against Google are also to set be heard in federal courtrooms.

The lawsuit against Google was filed nearly four years ago during the term of former President Donald Trump.

Antitrust regulators at the Justice Department have made increased efforts to rein in tech companies under President Joe Biden.