U.S. v. Google: What to Know About the Biggest Antitrust Trial in 20 Years
Google, the country’s dominant search engine, faces its biggest legal threat ever this week when the company goes on civil trial in Washington on allegations of violating U.S. antitrust laws. The Justice Department’s case is aimed at Google search, and whether the company has used illegal agreements to sideline its rivals and harmed consumers and advertisers in the process.
Google pays billions of dollars to Apple, for example, to be the default search engine on the Safari browser. Alphabet-owned Google grew up during an era of more relaxed antitrust enforcement, particularly against technology companies that developed innovative—and often free—ways to explore and use the internet. Efforts to regulate Google and other technology giants have failed to advance in Congress in recent years.
In the absence of such rules, the government is trying to use antitrust law to govern competition on the web and put curbs on the internet’s gatekeepers. Here are some crucial questions about the biggest U.S. antitrust trial since the government challenged Microsoft more than 20 years ago.
Why is Google facing an antitrust lawsuit? The Justice Department and a group of states sued Google three years ago, alleging it illegally maintains a monopoly in online search and related advertising markets. Google has about a 90% market share in search and maintains its dominance through restrictive agreements with browser and phone partners such as Apple, Mozilla, Samsung and Verizon, according to the Justice Department. These deals, which the government says are illegal, make Google the default search engine on most U.S.
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