Google has violated US antitrust law with its search business, a federal judge ruled
Monday, handing the tech giant a staggering court defeat with the potential to
reshape how millions of Americans get information online and to upend decades
of dominance.

“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,” US District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in Monday’s
opinion. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”

The decision by the US District Court for the District of Columbia is a stunning
rebuke of Google’s oldest and most important business. The company has spent t
ens of billions of dollars on exclusive contracts to secure a dominant position as the
world’s default search provider on smartphones and web browsers.

Those contracts have given it the scale to block out would-be rivals such as
Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo, the US government alleged in a historic antitrust
lawsuit filed during the Trump administration.

Now, said Mehta, that powerful position has led to anticompetitive behavior that must
be stopped.