Businesses start to enter murky antitrust waters when they hold more than a 50% share of a given market. And amid the close of its antitrust case with the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) — the first anti-monopoly tech lawsuit the US has filed in over two decades — Google is in dark seas.
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The DOJ said in its closing argument against Google that the tech giant holds a 90% share of the search engine market. By contrast, the federal regulator said Microsoft’s Bing holds a 5.5% share, Yahoo a 2.2% stake, and DuckDuckGo a 2.1% share.
To put Google’s alleged 90% stake into further context, look no further than another high-profile lawsuit the DOJ this year — this time with Apple. In January, the department alleged that the company has a monopoly over the high-end smartphone market, with a more than 70% share of the space, far below that of Google’s 90% search stake. (Apple has denied the DOJ’s allegations.)
Google’s case has also been likened to a 1998 lawsuit filed by the DOJ against Microsoft, which found that Microsoft held a similarly overwhelming share — more than 90% —of the computer operating system market.
Google and the DOJ on Friday wrapped up closing arguments in what’s been dubbed the highest-profile antitrust trial of the 21st century. The DOJ sued Google in 2020 for allegedly maintaining a monopoly in the search engine market, pushing out competitors like Microsoft, by pursuing agreements with device makers and web browsers to be their default search engine. In one revelation, Google reportedly paid Apple $20 billion to be the default search engine on its web browser, Safari, in 2022 alone.
The case was heard by Judge Amit Mehta in a US district court in Washington, DC Mehta’s decision is expected in late summer or early fall.
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