Federal Court Rules Google Is Monopoly, Even Without Marvin Gardens
Next: Five years of appeals, Chance cards.
A federal judge found Google guilty of monopolistic practices yesterday, ruling that the tech giant had unfairly crushed competitors and prevented innovation to achieve market dominance, supremacy, ascendance, preeminence, dominion, mastery in the search engine field. In a 277-page ruling, US District Judge Amit Mehta found that Google had used abusive practices like paying Apple and other manufacturers billions of dollars to make Google the default search engine on their devices, and no brownie points for allowing users to switch to another search, because most never bother. Mehta explained,
After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.
Judge Mehta had no comment on the fact that it sounds kind of funny to read sentences about Google being found guilty by a judge whose name sounds like that of a different giant tech company.
Google and attorneys for its parent company, Alphabet Inc., had argued that the only reason it dominates the search market is that consumers love its search engine more than any other, and that’s why the product name is synonymous with searching on the internet, so there. Also Google has the best product because it can just buy up potential competitors and incorporate their innovations, or ignore them if it wants, no wait, strike that, we never said that. The AP reports,
Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said the company intends to appeal Mehta’s findings.
“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” Walker said.
Look, they can’t help it if they’re so good that everyone wants them, or at least settles for them because they’re the default.
Also, whenever you see some pud griping that this is Biden’s Woke Justice Department ruining everything by trying to interfere with Excellence, you just point out to them that the case began during Donald Trump’s “presidency,” and that capitalism needs to have competition in order to really work, so there. And yes, the Biden DOJ has for sure been more interested in pursuing antitrust cases than under previous administrations, where Donald Trump mostly considered antitrust laws as a way to get revenge on his enemies.
Again, from the AP:
The case depicted Google as a technological bully that methodically has thwarted competition to protect a search engine that has become the centerpiece of a digital advertising machine that generated nearly $240 billion in revenue last year. Justice Department lawyers argued that Google’s monopoly enabled it to charge advertisers artificially high prices while also enjoying the luxury of not having to invest more time and money into improving the quality of its search engine — a lax approach that hurt consumers.
Oh yes, and speaking of online ads, the New York Times notes that a second antitrust case about Google’s domination of online advertising is set to go to trial next month. The case is expected to focus on the One Weird Trick Google used to skew the market, which antitrust regulators hate.
The next phase of the trial will involve determining what to do about Google’s monopolistic practices so that competition can be more level; Judge Mehta will hold a hearing September 6 to get that process started.
The potential outcome could result in a wide-ranging order requiring Google to dismantle some of the pillars of its internet empire, or preventing it from paying to ensure its search engine automatically answers queries on the iPhone and other devices. Or, the judge could conclude only modest changes are required to level the playing field.
Either way, the AP points out that before any of that happens, the appeals process could take as long as five years, and I literally muttered “Good lord” when I read that.
Then of course there’s also the question of whether the Supreme Court will let the decision stand, which is debatable since it will probably note that the Founders believed that the best way to search for information was simply to read all the daily papers for oneself. If it was good enough for Benjamin Franklin, a printer and news-paper publisher, then the government has no business interfering.
PREVIOUSLY IN ANTITRUST!
[AP / NYT / US v. Google ruling] Photo: Anthony Quintano, Creative Commons License 2.0]
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I remember many years ago when Google had the motto "don't be evil." And then they conveniently dropped that, because PROFIT!
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