The antitrust ruling that could shake up the world of search

Google has become a dominant presence in our lives, a gateway to near-infinite information, implanted on the phones we carry in our back pockets every day. But how did it get like this? An antitrust case in the USA found that Google’s dominance may not be simply a natural phenomenon – and the consequences could change search for us all.

‘Google is a monopolist’

In 2020, the US Department of Justice, along with 11 state Attorneys General, filed a civil antitrust suit against tech behemoth Google, alleging that the company had been “unlawfully maintaining monopolies through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices in the search and search advertising markets.”

It was alleged that Google had made deals with companies including Apple to forbid their search engines from being preinstalled on devices. It also forced its own products to be preinstalled, therefore forcing out smaller players and reducing competition.

Google argued its dominance stemmed from having a superior product that consumers preferred over others.

In early August the judge in the case – Judge Amit Mehta – ruled that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”

One of the most shocking revelations was just how much Google had paid to ensure its dominance: $26.3 billion in 2021 alone. As Mehta noted in his ruling, “the default is extremely valuable real estate.”

It was a landmark judgement against one of the world’s biggest companies.

Google is planning to appeal.

Now, the case moves to deciding remedies, with that process set to begin in early September. Reports suggest there are several options open to the Department of Justice, from an injunction directing Google to cease its monopolising conduct, to forcing Google to share its data or algorithms with competitors.

Another potential remedy being weighed up is breaking Google into parts.

What does this mean for your device?

Dr Dana Mckay, Associate Dean of Interaction, Technology and Information at RMIT University, says the ruling hadn’t been much of a surprise. She cited as precedent a previous case involving the illegal monopolising of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in 2001, which she described as “a pretty close parallel.”

Nevertheless, she admitted she had been concerned that Google would be “too big to fail” due not just to the company’s sheer size, but its global reach.

Since the ruling, reports have suggested the US Department of Justice is considering the possibility of breaking up the monopoly. In the earlier Microsoft case, the Department ultimately decided not to pursue this option.

While Mckay said it is difficult to know yet what sort of split could occur should the Department opt for this remedy against Google, she said the ones she had seen considered included splitting off the Android operating system.

This would have implications for billions of internet users globally; around the world, more than three billion devices use the Android system.

One possibility, according to Mckay, is that if Android were to be split from Google it would become a separate company to the Chrome browser – leading her to question what would happen to the business model for Chrome. Although some open-source browser options exist, the major internet gateways are back by major tech companies like Apple and Microsoft and thus don’t require users to pay for their services.

Ultimately, a split like this could mean that consumers have to begin paying for access to Chrome – the world’s biggest internet browser by market share.

“We are used to not paying for our browsers, so how does the business model work for a standalone browser?” she muses.

“If Android is split off, it’ll be the mobile phone companies that pay for it, and consumers through the mobile phone companies. It will mean that either the companies will sign deals with Google to be the main search provider, or that these browsers will be forced to offer users a choice at the start of their interaction with them. You’ll be presumably presented with a list [of search engine options]”

On new devices, customers would then choose their preferred option and allow it to be installed on and integrated with their product.

But as for which option they’d be likely to choose, Mckay theorises most people would choose the Google-related option due simply to familiarity and force of habit.

“At this point, we’ve already been enculturated to use Google,” she says.

Of course, nothing is certain and the internet has already seen seismic changes in preferred websites and apps – Mckay referenced the switch from MySpace to Facebook as the preferred social media platform many years ago, and further audience splintering in more recent times to other forms of social media.

“Maybe we’re about to see that happen in search as well. Maybe the public will find something they prefer more, whether it’s DuckDuckGo or Bing or some other search engine that we have yet to see. Will Google ever become MySpace? I don’t think so, but it’s possible,” she says.

Could search engine ethics change?

Mckay says, “making more room in the browser market would [not] be a bad thing”.

“It’s not an easy market to enter by any stretch of the imagination … it’s a marketplace that requires a significant investment of money and technological capacity to enter, but we might see something like DuckDuckGo become more prominent as a result of this.”

She added that this leads to other questions about how search engines and browsers operate. In the case of Google and Chrome, user data is the currency of choice with Google tracking what users search and interact with, whereas refreshing the search engine and browser market could lead to new ways of thinking about giving the world access to the internet.

“The reason [Google has] gotten so good is because they’ve learned about us as they’ve gone along. So maybe there are different business models that we’ll see come out [of this] as well.”

A related issue is the “version of the internet” that each company serves up through its products. While Google doesn’t own a news outlet that it can promote through its browser, Mckay said it does manipulate what people see through its algorithms.

Nevertheless, Mckay said it’s important to remember the case that has just been run doesn’t deal specifically with ethics or human rights; it’s an economic case.

“This is a case about the right of some people who are not so rich as Google to make a bit more money, and Google essentially squeezing them out of the marketplace,” she says.

Google isn’t the only tech company to face antitrust action in recent times. Besides the Microsoft Internet Explorer case that Mckay referenced, other cases are currently making their way through the courts: an antitrust lawsuit against Meta, filed by the Federal Trade Commission in the US, and another against Amazon, which is set to go to trial in October 2026.

Mckay tells LSJ this raises concerns about the ongoing business practices of tech giants.

Asked whether the result in the Google case could lead to changes in their business practices, Mckay is dismissive: “probably not”.

She said tech companies had had “carte blanche” for years, and were now facing a “flurry” of antitrust suits as authorities seek to create better social outcomes from the power of the tech giants.

“These antitrust lawsuits are a way of the public saying, ‘actually, we don’t want you running our lives in quite the same way that you have been and we don’t give you carte blanche to operate in whatever way you want to operate’.”

Legal action against tech companies is spreading in Australia too; Mckay cited the E-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant’s efforts to hold Twitter (now known as X) to account for allowing online hate as an area where Australia had attempted to take the lead.

What next for Google users?

For Australian users right now, there is unlikely to be any major, immediate change in how they use or interact with Google as the tech company appeals the ruling, Mckay says.

If the company is split up, changes will ripple around the world.

For now though, customers will continue to buy their devices and continue to rely on Google for search and internet browsing. It’s possible that at some point in the future, customers setting up new devices will be given a choice as to which search engine they want to install, but Mckay believes this is a long way off.

“What [Google is] going to do about [the ruling] is a really interesting question, because essentially you can’t undo the competitive advantage that Google has gained by understanding what mobile search looks like.

“I think this is going to be an interesting sort of ‘watch this space’. We might be seeing the end of the tech giants. I think getting a few more legitimate, active players in that space is a good thing for society as a whole,” Mckay says.