A blockbuster anti-trust trial is underway in Washington, DC today (Tues), where the United States Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys general have accused Alphabet’s Google of unlawfully abusing its dominance in the search engine market to maintain monopoly power.
The US Justice Department and 52 attorneys general representing US states or territories say Google unfairly forged its domination of online search by paying billions of dollars to Apple and other business partners to ensure its search engine would be the default on most phones and browsers.
The US government’s lawsuit, filed in 2020 in federal court, alleges these deals were intended by Google to be “exclusionary”, denying rivals access to search queries and clicks, and allowing Google to entrench its market dominance.
Google maintains it did not violate antitrust law. It said in a January court filing that its browser agreements were “legitimate competition” and not “illicit exclusion”.
