The Google monopoly case: Google vs. Apple in an e-commerce law suit after the Google-Apple antitrust case

The US government brought the first tech monopoly case in recent years. While two decades passed between the Department of Justices’ antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft and its next tech anti-monopoly case against Google, filed in 2020, several more such cases quickly followed. Amazon, Apple, and Meta all now face their own monopolization lawsuits from the US government, and Google will go to trial against the DOJ a second time this fall over a separate challenge of its advertising technology business. That makes Mehta’s decision in this case more consequential for how other judges apply century-old antitrust laws to modern digital markets.

One of the most significant revelations from the case was the size of Google’s payments to Apple to secure the default search engine spot on iPhone browsers. An expert witness for Google let slip that the company shares 36 percent of search ad revenue from Safari with Apple. Apple was paid $20 billion by Google for the default position.

United States Attorney General Merrick Garland called the decision “an historic win.” The path for innovation for generations to come is said to have been paved by it.

There are no plans yet to adjust its business in light of the judgments in San Francisco and Washington. Mehta will hold a separate trial to determine remedies in the search case, and a judge is mulling proposed penalties in the Play litigation. Changes made in response to antitrust scrutiny have been costly.

Mehta ruled that Google, with about 90 percent market share, has monopoly power in both general search and general search text ads. He found that Google’s deals with partners harm competition and that Google hadn’t shown otherwise.