A federal U.S. judge ruled Monday that Google has illegally held a monopoly in two market areas: search and text advertising.
The landmark case from the government, filed in 2020, alleged that Google has kept its share of the general search market by creating strong barriers to entry and a feedback loop that sustained its dominance. The court found that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which outlaws monopolies.
The ruling marks the first anti-monopoly decision against a tech company in decades.
“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in the decision.
