Google to Ask for an End to DOJ Antitrust Case

It is expected that a federal judge will hear Google's argument on Thursday about why it should not have to go to trial later this year in connection with the landmark antitrust case over its search engine dominance.

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In a 2020 civil lawsuit brought by the Justice Department, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta has scheduled an oral argument at which both sides will weigh in on Google's request for judgment in its favor in a case that both sides have requested for judgment in their favor. The company is also asking Judge Mehta to toss out a similar lawsuit brought by a bipartisan coalition of 38 state attorneys general in partnership with Google.

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The search engine giant Google, which is part of Alphabet Inc., GOOG 1.98% is claiming people use its search engine because of its superiority, and not due to any anticompetitive agreements that go into effect. This is according to court filings and corporate blog posts.

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A ruling is unlikely to be issued from the bench by Judge Mehta on Thursday. A written decision will be issued by the judge in the spring or summer of this year.

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There is a good chance that the judge will deny Google's request to have the case thrown out before trial, said Rebecca Allensworth, professor of antitrust law at Vanderbilt University Law School.

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“It is unlikely that Judge Mehta will grant summary judgment in favor of Google due to the fact that there are still factual questions to be resolved,” stated Ms. Allensworth. 

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In such a high-profile case, she continued, "the judge might want to be perceived as doing everything he or she can within the available procedure, which means a trial, in order to make the best impression possible."

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It is estimated that Google handles about 90% of all searches conducted through search engines worldwide. In the Justice Department's lawsuit, Google is accused of maintaining monopolies through exclusionary distribution agreements that direct billions of search queries to it every single day, including contracts that make Google the default search engine on Apple's Safari browser and Mozilla's Firefox browser.

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During the final weeks of the Trump administration, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the company in October 2020. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit on behalf of 11 Republican-led states that joined the case.

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Two months after the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the company in December 2020, a group of 38 states filed a follow-up lawsuit against the company. The arguments, in that case, cross over with some of those in the other case, as well as some broader claims about how Google ranks search results in general.

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There have been claims made by Google that the "browser default" agreements that are at the core of this case are not anticompetitive in any way.

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“Every time Apple and Mozilla have entered into a new or amended agreement to set Google as the default search engine, they have done so based on their own independent conclusions based on evaluating other rival search engines and concluding that doing so will provide the best experience for their customers,” Google said in a court filing in January.

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It has been tentatively scheduled that a nonjury trial will be held on Sept. 12, according to Judge Mehta. In the upcoming trial, which could take several weeks, the question of whether or not Google violated antitrust laws will be the only issue on the table.

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The judge is expected to schedule a follow-up proceeding if Google loses the case in which the relief to be granted will be decided by a jury. Depending on the circumstances, the Justice Department may seek a court order to order Google to spin off parts of the company or to unwind business contracts with third parties.

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Additionally, the Justice Department filed a separate complaint in January alleging that Google was abusing its position as a broker, supplier, and online auctioneer of ads placed on websites and mobile apps as well as the dominance of its search engine in the market.

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This lawsuit seeks to break up Google's business that brokers digital advertising across much of the internet in an effort to break up the ad tech industry. The court complaint also promises to be a long and protracted court battle with broad repercussions for the digital advertising industry as a whole.