Google is reportedly appealing a court ruling that found it held an online search monopoly.
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The Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the tech giant in 2020, arguing that Google had exploited its dominant position in the online search space. A federal judge sided with the government in 2024, finding that Google had violated the law by paying companies like Apple to have its search engine appear as the primary option on smartphones and in web browsers.
According to a report Friday (May 22) by The New York Times (NYT), Google’s appeal argues that Judge Amit P. Mehta, had improperly applied antitrust law in concluding those deals broke the law. The company also argued the judge erred with a ruling that tried to address the monopoly concerns by forcing Google to share some data with its rivals.
As NYT noted, the appeal is the latest chapter in an ongoing battle between Google and the federal government, which has led to the first major antitrust rulings against a Big Tech company in the modern internet age.
The DOJ also sued Google in 2023, claiming it held a monopoly in advertising technology. Google lost that case as well, with the judge expected to hand down a decision on how to remedy the issue sometime this year.
Mehta’s ruling, the report added, fell short of the government’s solution, which called for the break-up of Google.
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In its appeal, Google took issue with Mehta’s original ruling and his decision on remedies, NYT added, saying that the decision that Google had broken federal antitrust law was “as basic an error of antitrust law as a court can make.”
“The court’s own findings establish that Google’s conduct was lawful,” the company said in the filing, per NYT. “It developed a superior search engine through hard work, bold innovation and shrewd business decisions.”
This case is happening at a time when Google is rolling out what it calls the largest upgrade to Search in more than 25 years.
Announced May 19 at Google’s I/O developer conference in Mountain View, this reconfigured interface accepts text, images, documents, video and open browser tabs and replies with synthesized answers instead of a ranked list of links.
“Alongside it, Google launched persistent AI agents in Search that monitor topics and push notifications without being prompted,” PYMNTS wrote last week.
Also at the conference, Google VP of Search Liz Reid told reporters query volume hit an all-time high last quarter. Google Search and advertising revenue came to $60.4 billion in the first quarter, a 19% year-over-year increase, running counter to predictions that AI-generated answers would eat into Search’s ad business.
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