Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that US$26 billion ($34.9 billion) in payments that Google made to other companies to make its search engine the default option on smartphones and web browsers effectively blocked any other competitor from succeeding in the market. Mehta’s ruling came after a 10-week trial in 2023 — the first on monopolisation charges to pit the federal government against a US technology company in more than two decades.
Alphabet’s Google lost the biggest antitrust challenge it faced this summer when a US judge found that it illegally monopolised the search market. Now it’s facing the possibility that the result will be a forced breakup of the company.
State attorneys general and the US Justice Department said they are considering asking Judge Amit Mehta to force Google to sell off parts of its business in what would mark the biggest forced breakup of a US company since AT&T was dismantled in 1984. Mehta will oversee a trial set for April 2025 on proposed remedies for illegal monopolisation.
