On Tuesday, the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of illegal monopoly over search and search advertising.
In a conversation with reporters, Jeff Rosen, US deputy attorney general said “As the antitrust complaint filed today explains, [Google] has maintained its monopoly power through exclusionary practices that are harmful to competition,” .
“If the government does not enforce the antitrust laws to enable competition, we could lose the next wave of innovation. If that happens, Americans may never get to see the next Google.” he added.
However, the tech giant refutes all allegations.
“Today’s lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed,” Kent Walker, Google’s senior vice president of global affairs, said in a post. “People use Google because they choose to, not because they’re forced to, or because they can’t find alternatives.”
The antitrust suit is one of the most ambitious legal challenges to a major tech company like Google, adjoining investigations by both the Department of Justice and a range of state attorneys general.
Filed in Washington DC, the much awaited suit alleges that that Google uses billions of dollars collected from advertisements on its platform to pay for mobile-phone manufacturers, carriers and browsers, like Apple Inc.’s Safari, to maintain Google as their preset, default search engine.
Tuesday’s case against Google marks the highest-profile case the US has brought against a tech company in decades.
