A historical ruling from the US vs Google has shaken the big tech industry on a large scale. The federal antitrust case was brought by the United States Department of Justice in 2020. After four years of trial, the case was decided on August 5.


The lawsuit claims that Google has unfairly restricted competition in the search market by making anti-competitive agreements with Apple and other mobile carriers. This has given Google control of approximately 88% of the US domestic search engine market. This has led to a monopoly in the search advertising market and allowed Google to charge advertisers more than they would pay in a competitive setting.
After 4 years of battle, Judge Mehta ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search.
As a consequence of the ruling, Google’s parent company Alphabet lost significant share values. On Wednesday the share further dropped by a further 0.60%.
What Google’s breakup can lead to?
Now, techies speculate that Google has to break down its services into multiple separate organizations.

This can lead to a problem for the users as two of Google’s most popular services Gmail and Android are free, and Google can subsidize these services from the money they generate from search engine advertising.
If Gmail, Android and other Google services go behind a paywall, it can cause colossal problems for users across the globe.
Apple will likely lose money too
Google has an exclusive contract with Apple to be the default browser of iPhone and Safari Web browser. Google pays a cut of 36% of the revenues it generates from these devices and browsers to Apple.
In 2022, Google paid Apple about $20 billion as revenue. If Google is barred from making the deal further, Apple will likely lose revenue too. After the verdict, Apple’s share took a large hit by dropping down a further 2.40%.
Google also has similar exclusive deals with Samsung, Mozilla Firefox, and other device makers.
Google is appealing the decision
After the ruling, Google executives said that they would appeal the decision.
Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, published a statement saying: “This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available.”
The ruling does not say anything about sanctions. Remedies of the ruling will be resolved in another trial.
Afterwards, Google can just get away by paying a fine or it can be ordered to be restructured which will lead to disruption for both the company and its users.