Google is an illegal monopolist and Apple is a giant: The search case reveals the size of Google payments to Apple in 2022
Mehta sided with Google on some issues but rejected its overall argument that the company held no illegal monopoly whatsoever. A jury ruled that the Play store was an illegal monopolist.
One of the most significant revelations from the case was the size of Google’s payments to Apple to secure the default search engine spot on iPhone browsers. An expert witness let slip that the company shares a small amount of revenue with Apple. Apple paid $20 billion to be the default position in 2022, according to a new report.
Garland described the decision as an historic win. The path for innovation will beaves the way for generations to come, according to the assistant attorney general.
In view of the judgments in San Francisco and Washington, it is yet to be determined what adjustments will need to be made. Mehta will be holding a separate trial to resolve the search case and a judge is weighing penalties in the Play litigation. Changes made to its structure by the company in the wake of antitrust scrutiny have been costly.
Mehta ruled that Google, with about 90 percent market share, has monopoly power in both general search and general search text ads. He found that the deals with partners harm competition and that the company hadn’t shown anything different.
Google and the plaintiffs will spar over how severe its penalty should be, presenting experts and written testimony before Mehta issues another opinion and order. It’s not clear what the exact timeline is. William Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission chair and a professor at George Washington University, tells The Verge that he expects Judge Amit Mehta to hold a roughly weeklong hearing on remedies this year and believes the overall process could stretch to the end of 2024.
A fight may take more than one year, according to an antitrust professor at a university. “There’s going to be gnashing of teeth over the remedy, and that is going to make it take a long time,” Allensworth says.
A milder remedy is an injunction that will stop what the court found to be improper. But even that includes changes that could range from trivial to seismic. Mehta could demand that Google modify its deals with companies like Apple and Mozilla, which will cement it as the default search engine on products like the iPhone.
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We could get a Supreme Court decision by the end of the year, according to Kovacic. Other schedules are less optimistic; George Hay, a Cornell University law professor, gave The Associated Press a timeline of up to five years.