The Google antitrust verdict looms. Here’s what to look for.

livemint.com:

WASHINGTON—U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta heard two days of closing arguments last week in the government’s landmark antitrust case against Google. Mehta lobbed skeptical questions toward lawyers for both sides, along the way dropping hints about how he’ll rule when he hands down his long-awaited written decision.

Here’s what we learned during the hearings: Mehta could announce his decision in the weeks or months to come, judging by timelines in past big antitrust cases. When oral arguments wound down on Friday afternoon, Mehta didn’t say which way he was leaning on the central question before him—whether Google exploited its market dominance to unlawfully stomp out competitors. “The importance and significance of this case is not lost on me, not only for Google but for the public," Mehta said.

Mehta previously heard 10 weeks of testimony from more than 50 witnesses, including Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google and its parent company, Alphabet. If he finds Google violated antitrust laws, Mehta would then schedule a “remedies" phase of the trial to determine what, if anything, should be done to bolster competition in the internet search market. Before delving into the merits of the case, Mehta must define the markets he’s analyzing.

This is a critical part of many antitrust disputes, and an unfavorable ruling on this preliminary issue could doom the government’s case. The Justice Department, joined by a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general, has said there’s a huge market for “general search services"—products that pull information from across the internet to answer all kinds of queries. The Justice Department says Google dominates this market, performing about 90 percent of internet searches worldwide,