The U.S. Department of Justice launched a civil antitrust lawsuit against Google in October 2020, accusing the technology giant of monopolizing search and search advertising.
The lawsuits are being tried separately in 35 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam, and the latest news is that the cases have been consolidated into one case for trial. Over the next ten weeks, the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general will argue in Washington.
This case focuses on examining Google’s “exclusive deals” with mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung and Apple, as well as Google’s practice of pre-installing services on Android devices.
The U.S. Department of Justice took Google to court on Tuesday in a landmark trial that marks the first time the Justice Department has brought an antitrust lawsuit against a major tech company in more than 20 years.
The Justice Department alleges that Google illegally established its dominance in online search by entering into exclusive contracts with device manufacturers, mobile carriers and other entities, thereby harming rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo.
Google argued that its dominance was not the result of any illegal activity but the superior quality of its search engine and consumer preferences. Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, emphasized:
People use Google not because they have to, but because they want to. It’s easy to switch your default search engine — we’re long past the days of dial-up and CD-ROMs.
