Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search, a federal judge ruled this week, in a legal defeat that could upend parent company Alphabet’s dominance of the digital advertising market in the U.S. “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in Monday’s opinion.
Alphabet has spent billions of dollars on exclusive contracts to help secure its dominant position as the world’s default search provider on smartphones and web browsers and has established a stranglehold over the digital advertising market as a result.
The case highlighted the stranglehold that a handful of major technology companies now have over digital ad spending in the U.S., with Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon leading the charge. Google’s defeat will likely be viewed as good news by publishers, which have seen their ability to compete for advertisers’ dollars dwindle as the dominance of Alphabet and others has grown consistently over the past 20 years.
