A federal judge ruled Google is a monopoly. What happens now?

Google is a monopoly that illegally maintained its stranglehold on the search world, a federal judge ruled Monday, Aug. 5. It's a major antitrust victory for the Justice Department against Big Tech, and could impact other antitrust lawsuits against Google , Apple , Amazon and Meta. Google said it plans to appeal the decision.

This Google case is years in the making. The DOJ and attorneys general from 38 states and territories sued Google for anti-competitive practices back in 2020. That resulted in a 10-week trial last year that The New York Times called the " First Monopoly Trial of the Modern Internet Era ."

The suit narrowed in on Google's practice of paying billions to the likes of Apple and Samsung to have Google automatically handle searches on those devices. The New York Times said Google paid Apple $18 billion to be the default search engine back in 2021.

Lawyers for the government said that influence stopped competitors from being able to develop a product that could compete with Google on its massive scale. They also claimed the monopoly allowed Google to raise prices for ads shown in search results beyond what would be commanded by the market.

In a statement, Google Global Affairs President Kent Walker wrote, "This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available."

"We plan to appeal," Walker added. "As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use."

During the trial, Microsoft's CEO claimed the " oligopolistic" relationship Google had with Apple could push Google to dominate the AI race if it wasn’t stopped. Microsoft’s Bing is the closest competitor to Google when it comes to search, but it is by a very wide margin.

Meanwhile, Google’s lawyers argued the company's search engine is winning because it’s better .

Now the future of the search giant is in the hands of Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In his ruling, Mehta wrote, "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly."

This ruling does not yet come with a remedy. Mehta will have to decide if the way to correct Google’s monopoly is to potentially change the way it operates or force it to sell off part of its business.

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