Google's Search Monopoly Reloaded 🗿

The Antitrust ruling marks the first anti-monopoly decision against a tech company in decades. ⚖️

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A federal U.S. judge ruled Monday that Google has illegally held a monopoly in search and text advertising. The problem with this ruling is it might force Apple to reconsider their lucrative deal with Google.

This could upend the future of Search and advertising, eventually.

A lot of revenue is at stake:

Google pays Apple $20 billion annually, or about 36% of what it earns from search advertising made through the Safari browser, for the privilege, according to Morgan Stanley analysts.

Google 2020 Lawsuits Come home to Roost 🐔

The court homed in on Google’s exclusive search arrangements on Android and Apple’s iPhone and iPad devices.The Department of Justice and a bipartisan group of attorneys general from 38 states and territories, led by Colorado and Nebraska, filed similar but separate antitrust suits against Google in 2020.

If Apple changes Search provider, its revenue could also be impacted.

"For the foregoing reasons, the court concludes that Google has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by maintaining its monopoly in two product markets in the United States—general search services and general text advertising—through its exclusive distribution agreements."

Google Antitrust Ruling:

Read the full 286-page decision here:

"Google’s dominance has gone unchallenged for well over a decade. In 2009, 80% of all search queries in the United States already went through Google. That number has only grown. By 2020, it was nearly 90%, and even higher on mobile devices at almost 95%. The second-place search engine, Microsoft’s Bing, sees roughly 6% of all search queries—84% fewer than Google."

BigTech and Antitrust

The ruling is one of the largest antitrust decisions in decades, capping off a case that pitted the justice department against one of the world’s most valuable companies.

The landmark case from the government, filed in 2020, alleged that Google has kept its share of the general search market by creating strong barriers to entry and a feedback loop that sustained its dominance. The court found that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which outlaws monopolies.

• The ruling marks the first anti-monopoly decision against a tech company in decades.

• Google literally stacked its legal team with former DOJ employees.

• The antitrust trial pitting US prosecutors and nearly a dozen states against Google ended in May.

• There was no jury in the trial, which began in September of last year before taking a long hiatus for Mehta to consider a ruling.

• Government prosecutors had argued during the trial that Google illegally monopolized control over the internet search market, spending tens of billions of dollars each year on contracts to providers such as Apple and Samsung in order to become the default search engine on their devices.

• Google also spent vast sums of money to secure those agreements, the ruling noted, paying more than $26bn in 2021 alone to companies such as Apple in order to become the default search engine on devices.

• The Internet behemoth “has a major, largely unseen advantage over its rivals: default distribution,” Mehta wrote.

• Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said in a statement that the company plans to appeal the ruling.

• The repercussions could be significant. We’ll know more later this year.