Judge Amit P. Mehta of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia declared that Google has an illegal monopoly on the search engine market. A 286-page decision states that the business paid online browser and smartphone manufacturers $26 billion to have its search engine set as the default, keeping rivals from entering the market.

Mehta further declared that Google is not the only company offering search engine advertising, pointing out that Amazon and Walmart have started to sell search engine-related advertisements on their websites. On the other hand, Google has exclusive control over the text advertising that shows at the top of search results pages.


In more than 20 years, this is the first time a US District Court has found a tech company guilty. Although the judge has not yet stated what modifications it would pursue, we may see Google provide US Android customers the choice of search engine when configuring a new device.

Other decisions could involve breaking up Alphabet's search division from other products like Chrome or Android; if that is mandated, this could be the largest forced division of a US company since AT&T was broken up and forced to sell off a portion of its business to independent, smaller regional phone companies in 1984.


According to the complete research, Google routinely paid Apple and Samsung to use its search engine, which increased the company's valuation and brought in over $300 billion in revenue—mostly from search engine advertisements. This also impacted Google's market dominance, which increased from 80% in 2009 to 90% in 2020.

Google announced that it will appeal the ruling, claiming that customers' preference for its "better products" is the foundation of its success.