Filed in 2020 by the Justice Department (DOJ), U.S. et al. v. Google accuses the $1.7 trillion tech giant of monopolizing the search engine market through illegal means

Google will face the largest antitrust trial in its 25-year existence on Tuesday. The case focuses on how the world’s most-used search engine achieved its status.

It is the biggest monopoly trial of the internet era since Microsoft was accused of anti-competitive practices in 1998. Silicon Valley royalties from Alphabet, Apple, Mozilla, and Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai are expected to take the witness stand.

U.S. et al. v. Google
Filed in 2020 by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the trial, U.S. et al. v. Google, accuses the $1.7 trillion tech giant of monopolizing the search engine market through illegal means.

The DOJ’s case centers on the billions of dollars worth of annual agreements Google signed with big tech companies like Apple and others to make its search engine the default on iPhones, tabs or other devices.

In its filing, the DOJ claims such practices helped Google in maintain its monopoly, making it harder for smaller search engines to compete. It also made it harder for consumers to use other internet search engines.

To explain how difficult it is, DuckDuckGo says it takes an Android phone user 15 steps to select it as the default search engine. An average smartphone user might not jump through these hoops to choose a new search engine.

But
Google maintains that the options to choose other new search engines are always there and its contracts to make it the default search engine are not anti-competitive.

If found guilty,
Google could face fines, conduct mandates, and more, says Axios. 

Why is the case important?
According to data analysis firm Similarweb, Google occupies 90% of the search engine market in America and 91% globally.

There are only two other technology behemoths that have faced such large-scale monopoly accusations—IBM, which was dominant from 1969-1982 in the global transition from mainframe to personal computers, and Microsoft, which dominated the web market from 1998-2002.

Microsoft was accused of similar antitrust violations for making its web search engine the default in its operating system.