NEW YORK – A judge in the United States has ruled that Google spent billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly for its search engine, exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation. Monday’s landmark decision that Google broke antitrust law marks the first major success for US authorities taking on the dominance of Big Tech, which has come under fire from across the political spectrum.

Google’s dominance in the search market was evidence of its monopoly, the ruling found. Google “enjoys an 89.2% share of the market for general search services, which increases to 94.9% on mobile devices”, the ruling said. US Attorney General Merrick Garland called the decision “a historic win for the American people”, adding that “no company – no matter how large or influential – is above the law”.

The decision represents a major setback for Google and its parent company, Alphabet, which had argued that its popularity stemmed from consumers’ overwhelming desire to use a search engine that has become synonymous with looking things up online.

Google’s search engine processes an estimated 8.5 billion queries every day worldwide, nearly double its daily volume from 12 years ago, according to a recent study by investment firm BOND. Google’s global affairs president, Kent Walker, said the company would appeal the ruling, noting that Mehta had characterised Google as the industry’s best search engine. “Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal,” Walker said. (Aljazeera)…[+]