Google’s $20B default search deal with Apple violates antitrust law, judge rules

A federal judge today ruled that Google’s deals with Apple and other companies to be the default search engine violated antitrust law. As reported by Bloomberg, Judge Amit Mehta concluded that these agreements reduced competition in the search industry, giving Google an unfair advantage.

The Department of Justice filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google several years ago, accusing the company of unfairly dominating the search industry and online advertising. In the ruling today, Judge Mehta concluded:

After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

While Apple itself was not named as a defendant in the antitrust lawsuit, its multibillion-dollar deal with Google was one key aspect of the Department of Justice’s case. Google pays Apple billions of dollars every year to retain its status as the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Through this trial, it was revealed that Google paid Apple $20 billion to be the default search engine in 2022. The case also saw testimony from several Apple executives, including services boss Eddy Cue and machine learning executive John Giannandrea.

Today’s ruling from Judge Mehta explicitly calls out Google’s agreements with Apple and other companies as anti-competitive. It hasn’t yet been determined what penalties Google will face, nor what exactly this ruling means for Google’s arrangement with Apple.

Still, this represents a major risk for Apple moving forward. The company relies heavily on revenue from Google to boost its ever-growing Services revenue, which hit a record $24.2 billion in fiscal Q3 2024. If Apple and Google are forced to make changes to their deal, it could have a major impact on Apple’s own business going forward.

The Verge has a copy of the full 200+ page ruling from Judge Mehta.

Google statement

“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available. We appreciate the Court’s finding that Google is “the industry’s highest quality search engine, which has earned Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users”, that Google “has long been the best search engine, particularly on mobile devices”, “has continued to innovate in search” and that “Apple and Mozilla occasionally assess Google’s search quality relative to its rivals and find Google’s to be superior.”  Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal.  As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.” – Kent Walker, President, Global Affairs

Follow Chance: Threads, Twitter, Instagram, and Mastodon.