(VitalNews.org) – The Justice Department has decided on Google’s search engine and whether or not it is a monopoly. The Justice Department says that Google spends billions per year to keep its competition at bay and push its own search engine.
Google has continually said that they are not in the wrong here and are not initiating a monopoly. John Schmidtein, Google’s lawyer, said, “It would be an unprecedented decision to punish a company for winning on the merits.”
The Justice Department lawyer said that Google’s choices that lead them to believe it may be a monopoly are similar to Microsoft’s in a similar monopoly lawsuit. A group of states as well as the Justice Department gave their closing statements to Judge Amit Mehta who now has to decide on whether or not Google broke the law.
The majority of the case was regarding Google’s decision to have contracts in place with other companies such as Apple to have Google as the main search engine on their device. In the evidence brought to the trial, it’s said that Google pays about twenty billion dollars annually on these types of contracts.
Google argued that people have their own choice on what search engine they use and download on their phones. They stated that the popularity of Google is simply that people truly do choose them over competitors.
They also said that the government is not considering all forms of search, which would include other websites like Yelp, Airbnb, Amazon, and even social media sites like Facebook and TikTok.
Mehta wasn’t sure if some of these companies were in fact in the same category. They compared the fact that social media platforms can place ads based on a person’s interest, but Google can place ads based on a person’s direct queue.
After a session of questioning, Mehta said, “It’s only Google where we can see that directly declared intent.”
Copyright 2024, VitalNews.org
