U.S. District Court Partially Dismisses Claims Levied Against Google in Antitrust Trial

U.S. District Court Partially Dismisses Claims Levied Against Google in Antitrust Trial

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has dismissed several of the claims that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and a coalition of states brought against the company, including allegations that Google Search harms competing services.

The case dates back from a pair of lawsuits that the DOJ and a group of 38 state attorneys general had filed against Google in 2020.

While the DOJ and states originally filed separately, the suit has since become mostly consolidated. The suit accused Google of anti-competitive behavior on a number of fronts, including designing its search engine to disadvantage competitors like Yelp, Expedia, and TripAdvisor.

However, District Court Judge Amit Mehta threw out this claim, stating that the government’s proof of anti-competitive harm relied not on evidence but almost entirely on the opinion and speculation of its expert that it cited in its suit, by law professor Jonathan Baker.

The Judge also dropped the DOJ’s accusations related to the agreements Google makes with developers and Android phone makers because the government abandoned the allegations.

The Justice Department sued Google in 2020, accusing the $1.6 trillion company of illegally using its market muscle to hobble rivals in the biggest challenge to the power and influence of Big Tech since it sued Microsoft Corp in 1998.

The DOJ’s complaint focused on the ways Google allegedly used exclusionary contracts to tie up important channels to distribute search engines. In doing so, the agency alleged, Google maintained its monopoly power by denying rivals the chance to reach a similar scale and challenge its dominance.

The coalition of states made similar arguments but added additional points that aimed to address core arguments that Google’s longtime opponents have made against the tech giant.

In addition to the allegedly exclusionary contracts for search distribution, the states alleged that Google also violated antitrust law through its product to buy search ads and the way it designed its search results pages.

Though they are separate complaints, they were combined for pretrial purposes, such as discovery of evidence.

The Court upon perusal of the facts and submissions noted that Google LLC operates the largest U.S. internet general search engine whose brand name has become so ubiquitous that dictionaries recognize it as a verb.

Furthermore, the Judge noted that Google in 2020 had nearly 90% market share and advertisers spend over $80 billion annually alone to reach general search users.

To this, the Court remarked, “A dominant firm like Google does not violate the law, however, merely because it occupies a monopoly market position. It must act in a manner that produces anticompetitive effects in the defined markets. That is, a company with monopoly power acts unlawfully only when its conduct stifles competition.”

Therefore, the Court was of the considered view that government must show that each particular action- for example how Google handles search advertising, is a violation of antitrust law. This means that the government cannot show a string of actions and argue that these cumulatively break antitrust law, the Judge opined.

Consequently, the Court ruled that states will still be allowed to bring claims that Google used its search ad product to disadvantage advertisers by not allowing them interoperate between its own tools and competitors to buy general search ads, however they will no longer be able to bring the claim that Google harmed competition by designing its search results to push down search engine competitors’ results.

Despite this, some key arguments still remain standing. The Court did not dismiss the government’s allegations that Google violated antitrust policies by making Google the default search engine on mobile browsers.

For the above-stated reasons, the Court granted Google’s Motion for Summary Judgment in the DOJ Action in part.