Judge rules that Google search results don’t harm competitors in antitrust suit
Christopher Hutton
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A federal judge ruled that state attorneys general could not prove that Google‘s dominance in search has caused significant harm to its competitors, a win for the search engine in its legal battle over accusations of antitrust violations.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said in a ruling unsealed on Friday that the attempt to claim that Google’s search practices harmed companies such as Yelp and Expedia lacked sufficient evidence. This means that the lawsuit, filed by the Department of Justice alongside 11 states, will be scaled back significantly.
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The states’ case “relies not on evidence but almost entirely on the opinion and speculation of its expert,” Mehta wrote. “Simply put, there is no record evidence of anticompetitive harm.”
Mehta did leave in place allegations that Google made deals with companies such as Samsung and Apple to set its search engine as the default option, thus keeping competitors such as Microsoft’s Bing out of a majority of marketplaces. Those details will go to trial on Sept. 12.
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The DOJ and the states of Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina, and Texas filed the suit in the District of Columbia District Court in 2020.
Google also faces a lawsuit from the DOJ over allegations of online advertising dominance, as well as a suit from the newspaper publisher Gannett for its control of digital advertising.