Google is the target of a blockbuster antitrust trial scheduled to begin Tuesday that could change the future of internet search engines.
The suit, the biggest tech antitrust suit brought by the US Justice Department since it came after Microsoft in 1998, will argue that Google broke the law in its path to becoming the dominant force it is today.
Part of the case made by the DOJ and various states' attorneys general will focus on deals in which Google paid billions of dollars annually to Apple and others to make Google the default search engine on the Safari browser and other platforms.
Additionally, the Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) company inked contracts with the manufacturers of phones that run Google’s Android operating system, requiring them to preload certain Google apps onto devices.
The DOJ will argue that these deals created unfair barriers to entry for rivals like Microsoft’s Bing and others such as DuckDuckGo and thus allowed Google to illegally operate a monopoly.
Google, meanwhile, will argue that these agreements did not violate antitrust laws and actually created a better experience for users.
The case will also touch on allegations that Google’s search advertising tool, Search Ads 360, was not compatible enough with Bing. The federal complaint argues that Google instead “favors advertising on its own platform and steers advertiser spending towards itself by artificially denying advertisers the opportunity to evaluate the options that would serve those advertisers best.”
Notably, the US government has asked the judge to order "structural relief as needed," implying that Google could potentially be broken up in some capacity should the judge side against the tech titan.
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