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(Original title: Antitrust case of the century lost! Google was found to have monopolized the search market. Will it face a breakup or a huge fine?)

GoogleSaid to challenge the US courtmonopolyThe judgment was appealed.

On August 5, local time, a federal judge in the District Court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling that Google's search business violated U.S. antitrust laws, becoming the first antitrust ruling against a technology giant in the Internet era. This means that the plaintiff, the U.S. Department of Justice, has won the case, and Google's decades-long dominance in the search market may be overturned.

"Google is a monopoly and has acted to maintain its monopoly," wrote Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a nearly 300-page ruling. The ruling noted that Google maintained a monopoly in two major markets, general search services and general text advertising, through exclusive distribution agreements with browser developers, smartphone manufacturers and wireless carriers.

Google said in a statement released on social platform X that it plans to appeal the ruling. Kent Walker, president of Google Global Affairs, said in the statement: "The ruling recognizes that Google provides the best search engine, but concludes that we should not have easy access to it... While this litigation process moves forward, we will continue to focus on developing products that people find useful and easy to use."

After the losing ruling was announced, the share price of Google's parent company Alphabet widened its decline, falling by more than 5% at one point, and finally fell 4.6% to close at $160.64 per share, the lowest closing price since April 25, with a total market value of $2.02 trillion.

The case began in 2020, when the U.S. Department of Justice and attorneys general of 52 states and jurisdictions jointly sued Google, accusing Google ofapple, Samsung and other technology industry peers, smartphone manufacturers and wireless service providers pay billions of dollars in exchange for Google Search to be set as the default choice on mobile phones and web browsers. If these partners choose to receive a share of Google's search revenue, they cannot pre-install and promote competing search engines.

With the above methods, Google has occupied about 90% of the online search market and 95% of the smartphone market. Judge Mehta also pointed out in his ruling that Google paid $26.3 billion to mobile phone manufacturers in 2021 alone to ensure that they set Google as the default search engine on new phones.

However, after ruling that Google violated antitrust laws, Judge Mehta will schedule another trial to decide what kind of punishment to impose on Google. Now, Google has also chosen to appeal. Therefore, it may take several years for this lawsuit to be settled.

After Google lost the case, Mehta could theoretically order the breakup of Google, but legal industry analysts believe this is unlikely and more likely to impose new restrictions on the way Google does business, such as limiting Google's ability to become the default search engine on mobile phones by paying fees to companies such as Apple and Samsung.

Although Apple is not listed as a defendant in this case, its multi-billion dollar partnership with Google is one of the key issues in the case. It was revealed that Google pays Apple billions of dollars every year to maintain its position as the default search engine on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. In 2022 alone, Google paid Apple $20 billion.

Judge Mehta's ruling clearly stated that Google's agreement with Apple and other companies was anti-competitive. It has not yet been determined what kind of punishment Google will face and the specific impact of the ruling on Google's cooperation with Apple.

If Google loses this case, it will also be a major risk for its partner Apple. Apple relies on revenue from Google to drive its growing services business, which reached a record $24.2 billion in the third quarter of 2024. If Apple and Google are forced to adjust their partnership, it could have a significant impact on Apple.

Analysts pointed out that the ruling is a milestone. The last major antitrust ruling against a technology company was more than 20 years ago.MicrosoftAn antitrust lawsuit was filed against Microsoft, which lasted until 2001. Microsoft eventually paid $1.8 billion in settlement fees, was prohibited from participating in exclusive transactions that could harm competitors, and was required to open up some of its source code.

“This is the most important antitrust case of the century and the first in a series of cases against big tech companies,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who studies antitrust, after the Google ruling. “It’s a huge turning point.”

Currently, in addition to Google, Apple,Amazon, Meta and other technology giants have all sat in the dock: Amazon was accused of illegally monopolizing online retail in September last year; in March this year, the U.S. Department of Justice, together with attorneys general from more than a dozen states and regions in the United States, filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Apple, accusing it of monopolizing or attempting to monopolize the smartphone market; Meta is facing its first fine from the European Union, as the company is accused of abusing its dominant position in the classified advertising market.

Recently, there have been reports that the US Department of Justice has launched an antitrust investigation into Nvidia, mainly because Nvidia's competitors have complained that Nvidia may abuse its market dominance when selling artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

In addition, according to foreign media reports, after Google lost the case, Microsoft Bing executives were very excited, saying that Bing may replace Google and become the default search engine for Apple's system.

During the trial, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified that he was concerned about the dominance of rival Google, which would create a "Google network," and that Microsoft's relationship with Apple was an "oligopoly." Nadella said that if Google continued in this way, they would likely dominate the race to develop AI.

After the U.S. stock market closed on July 23, local time, Google's parent company Alphabet released its second quarter 2024 financial report ending June 30. The financial report shows that Alphabet's second quarter revenue was $84.742 billion, a year-on-year increase of 14%, higher than analysts' expectations of $84.19 billion; non-GAAP net profit was $23.619 billion, a year-on-year increase of 28.59%; diluted earnings per share was $1.89, the same as the previous quarter, higher than the market expectation of $1.85.