Did Google abuse its monopoly power?

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On August 5, a US judge ruled that Google illegally maintained a monopoly over its online search engine. Agreeing with the arguments of the US Department of Justice, the judge understood that the company created a cycle of dominance that not only prevented competitors from competing and introducing innovations, but also allowed the company to make gains that would not have been possible in a context of free competition.

At the heart of the dispute are the billions of dollars that netherlands bulk sms packages Google paid to companies such as Apple, LG, Motorola, Samsung, AT&T, T-Mobile, Mozilla, Opera, UCWeb and Verizon so that it could be the default search engine on devices – such as the iPhone – or browsers – such as Firefox. In other words, Google paid to ensure that it would be the only search engine that consumers saw, in order to stabilize its monopoly in that market.

This is why Google's main defense argument – ​​that its dominance in the market would result from the higher quality of its services – has been called into question: if that were the case, why would Google have to pay large sums to its partners to ensure the exclusivity or priority of its services?

Given this context, in what is considered the most important North American antitrust decision since the Microsoft case of the 1990s, the judge who ruled on the case understood that Google is a monopolist and acts as such, preventing small competitors – such as DuckDuckGo – and even large ones – such as Microsoft – from competing with Google's scale.