look news india
WASHINGTON: US District Judge Amit Mehta on Monday handed down a landmark 277-page ruling, ruling that anti-competitive practices by top companies have allowed Google to create a global monopoly in search by entering into illegal deals that have enabled it to rake in unsustainable wealth and drive up its prices in online advertising as competition is squeezed out.
Judge Amit Mehta, in his judgment, praised the quality of the Google search engine and acknowledged that the company became people's first choice in the beginning, adding that the company has resorted to anti-competitive practices to maintain its position as a market leader in the past decade. Google strengthened its monopoly by making lucrative deals to become the default search engine on iPhones and other devices including personal computers.
Google made such deals worth $26 billion in 2021. Due to this, if the customer does not change the settings and chooses any other option, then his search request started being processed by Google itself, due to which Google got abundant information to improve its search engine, which its competitors could not get in any way. Because they did not have access to user data like Google. Due to these default requests, Google's search traffic increased by 60 percent in 2017. Mehta said in his decision that this increase in search traffic volume gave Google more opportunities to sell its advertisements, which generated the majority of the parent company's $307 billion annual revenue. According to the deal made by Google with Apple company, Apple pays $20 billion per year to keep Google as the default search engine in iPhone and other products. This deal will remain valid till 2026 and there is also an option to extend it till 2028. Further hearing of the case will now be held before Mehta on September 6 in Washington DC.
Attorney General Merrick Garland called the decision a historic victory for the American people against Google and said no company, no matter how large or prestigious, is above the law. The Justice Department will continue to vigorously enforce antitrust laws. Google said it plans to appeal the decision.
