Google Antitrust Lawsuit

Synopsis: This article explores the Google antitrust lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ), targeting the company’s dominance in both search and search advertising. It outlines key legal developments, contextualizes the case within broader antitrust efforts, and compares Google’s legal battle to Microsoft’s in the early 2000s.
 

The Antitrust Lawsuits

Google has been in the fed’s crosshairs for the past five years with the Department of Justice (DOJ) filing its first antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant’s search business on October 20th, 2020. Alleging an unlawful monopoly with 88% of the U.S. Search Market and 94% of mobile searches occurring on its services. They argue that Google’s billion-dollar contracts with Apple, Mozilla and others to be the default search engine on browsers and mobile devices has cut off rivals from key distribution channels and harmed consumers by lowering the overall quality of search services.

The DOJ’s second suit is against Google’s Search Advertising business, filed in January 2023, citing a consolidation of control over digital advertising tools to sell advertising space – such as its acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1B in 2007 – forcing adoption of Google’s tools to lock in website publishers and, providing “must have” advertiser demand to its ad exchange. The lawsuit also declares that Google distorts auction competition by limiting real-time bidding on publisher inventory to its ad exchange impeding other ad exchanges to compete and manipulating the auction market used to deprive rivals of scale and halt the rise of rival technologies.

(Source: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-google-monopolizing-digital-advertising-technologies)

Search Trial Timeline

Google’s Search case began trial in September 2023, with closing arguments announced May 2024. And in those closing statement’s Google defended itself by claiming its success was generated through a “superior product” not coercive tactics.

On August 5, 2024, the trial Judge, Amit Mehta, ruled that Google violated antitrust laws by spending $26.3 billion in 2021 alone, to ensure its search engine remains the default on smartphones and browsers, thus maintaining its dominant market share.

With Google found guilty of being a monopolist, the court began procedure to find a remedy, where in November 2024, the DOJ proposed breaking up Google to curb its dominance, including divesting Chrome, a ban on Google’s lucrative deals that make its search engine the default on devices like Apple iPhone, and a requirement that Google licence its search index data to competitors.

Google criticized the argument in a blog post, stating that the “DOJ had a chance to propose remedies related to issues in this case: search distribution agreements” but “Instead chose to push a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership.”

Closing arguments for the remedies phase of the trial were in May,  2025, with Google looking for softer alternatives, indicating that it would stop making exclusive agreements with device makers and that they will establish an oversight committee.

During the hearing, Judge Mehta suggested taking less aggressive measures to restore competition, stating “An alternate default search engine in Apple’s Safari browser is unlikely to come from existing rival search engines like DuckDuckGo or Bing”, but rather “AI companies that can do more than just search, because maybe people don’t want 10 blue links anymore”.

Mehta has indicated that he expects to issue a decision in August 2025.

Google says it will appeal any potential online search antitrust decision, which could push a final decision into late 2025 or early 2026.
 

Search Advertising Trial Timeline

The DOJ’s second antitrust trial is against Google’s Search Advertising business, began in September 2024 led by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema.

In April 2025, judge Brinkema ruled that Google unlawfully monopolized markets for publisher ad servers and the market for ad exchanges, which sit between buyers and sellers. But antitrust enforcers failed to show the company had a monopoly in advertiser networks.

The DOJ proposed that Google sell its AdX digital ad marketplace and its DoubleClick for Publishers platform for managing and delivering ads on websites.

Google responded to the DOJ’s proposal by stating “The DOJ’s additional proposals to force a divestiture of our ad tech tools go well beyond the Court’s findings, have no basis in law, and would harm publishers and advertisers.” Indicating that the company supported behavioural remedies including real-time bids available to competitors, but prosecutors cannot legally force it sell parts of its business.

The remedies trial for Google’s search advertising antitrust case is scheduled to begin on September 22, 2025, with the judge’s decision for remedies on its Search Advertising business likely to come in late 2025 or into 2026.
 

Microsoft’s Antitrust Outcome

In May 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), filed suit against Microsoft claiming the company had monopolized the market for personal computer (PC) operating systems and had used its monopoly to engage in a wide range of antitrust violations including creating a significant “applications barrier to entry” as Microsoft had over 70,000 applications (including Microsoft Office), while competitors like Apple and OS/2 had 12,000 and 2,500, respectively.

The case was tried in federal district court from October 19, 1998, through June 24, 1999, with  the judge’s legal conclusions on April 3, 2000. With Judge Jackson accepting the Government’s proposed remedies, which included limiting Microsoft’s use of exclusive contracts and its control over the PC “desktop.” The Judge also supported the DOJ’s proposal that Microsoft be divided into two smaller companies (1) an operating system company, and (2) an applications company.

Following the decision, Microsoft vowed to appeal the decision, with Bill Gate’s stating “While we did everything we could to settle this case, and will continue to look for new opportunities to resolve it without further litigation, we believe we have a strong case on appeal.”

Microsoft’s appeal trial was in June of 2021, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia siding with Microsoft, claiming that Microsoft had offered evidence that the combination of Internet Explorer (IE) and the Operating System (OS) offered functionality that was not available without product integration – reversing Judge Jackson’s decision that Microsoft should be broken up as an illegal monopoly.

A thirty-two-day remedy trial was held, and, on November 1, 2001, the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case, requiring Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies. But the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor did it prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future.

And exactly one year later, on November 1, 2002, Judge Kollar-Kotelly released a ruling that accepted most of the proposed DOJ settlement. The settlement required Microsoft to give computer makers greater freedom to feature rival software on their machines, prohibits Microsoft from retaliating against those who choose non-Microsoft products, and would block Microsoft from participating in exclusive deals to hurt competitors and keep it from engaging in a wide range of behaviour that earlier courts determined to be in violation of antitrust laws.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly stated, “The monopoly in this case was not found to have been illegally acquired, but only to have been illegally maintained. Therefore, rather than the termination of the monopoly, the proper objective of the remedy in this case is termination of the exclusionary acts and practices related thereto, which served to illegally maintain the monopoly.”
 

Conclusion

Judges have concluded that Google holds illegal monopolies in both of its Search and Search Advertising antitrust cases – with Judge Mehta’s remediation decision on its search trial expected in August 2025 while its search advertising case will begin the remedies trial in September 2025. Both cases will likely be dragged out by the appeals court into late 2025 or early 2026.

Google is probably hopeful to receive a similar outcome to what Microsoft did 23 years prior, with a more lenient regulation on behaviour rather than a forced breakup. Comparing Google’s search case to that of Microsoft’s, both received pressure against their exclusive agreements which maintained their monopolies. As both were front runners in their respective tech fields, providing a product/service that was unmatched. However, Google’s search advertising antitrust case may be dissimilar in that its search advertising network will likely be argued to have been illegally acquired through its transformational acquisition of DoubleClick for $3.1B in 2007.

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