Google and DOJ attorneys begin closing antitrust arguments

Lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department and Google yesterday began their closing arguments in an ongoing antitrust trial, which comes nearly nine months after it began and more than three years after its filing in 2020.

The high-stakes case taking place in U.S. District Court centers on whether Google broke U.S. antitrust laws to maintain its monopoly. That requires the DoJ — and a group of state attorneys general involved as co-plaintiffs — to not only show Google has a monopoly on search but also prove the giant’s actions harmed competition and stifled innovation.

Overseeing the trial is U.S. Judge Amit P. Mehta, who challenged arguments on both sides while asking attorneys about a range of related topics. While Mehta was skeptical of Google’s claims that vertical-specific search — like Amazon for shopping and ESPN for sports — counted as direct competition, he also poked holes in the DoJ’s claims that competing with Google was too costly. Two examples discussed at length were startups like DuckDuckGo and Neeva, which both sought to win over users by improving search quality and boosting user privacy.

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