Google appeals landmark US antitrust search monopoly ruling

Alphabet’s Google has officially launched its legal counteroffensive, appealing a landmark federal court ruling that declared its online search and advertising business an illegal monopoly.

In a filing on Friday, Google argued that U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta made critical legal errors in his original 2024 ruling. That initial decision found that Google had effectively choked out competition by shelling out billions of dollars annually to tech giants like Apple to secure its spot as the default search engine on smartphones and web browsers, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.

Google’s defense team pushed back on that narrative, arguing that these revenue-sharing agreements never actually prevented device makers or browser developers from promoting alternative search engines, such as Microsoft’s Bing. Instead, the company maintains that its dominance is the result of fair play and product quality.

Google stated it excelled in the market fairly by developing a "superior search engine through hard work, bold innovation, and shrewd business decisions."

The stakes of the appeal are incredibly high for the tech landscape. Judge Mehta's remedy order required Google to share portions of its valuable search data with direct competitors—a move that could give a massive boost to artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI as they build out rival search tools. A victory in the appeals court would completely wipe out that data-sharing mandate.

The legal battle is far from over. The U.S. Department of Justice, which declined to comment on Google's latest filing, is scheduled to submit its own counterarguments in July.

The case is now headed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. If Google fails to convince the appellate judges, the tech giant’s final option will be to take the fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

News.Az 

By Aysel Mammadzada