HUGE: A federal court judge rules — in a case brought by the Trump DOJ and continued by the Biden DOJ — that Google is an illegal monopoly and violated anti-trust laws by abusing their search monopoly by forcing consumers to use its search engine.

Remedies to be decided next.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 5, 2024

I should also note that this decision is very beneficial to @rumblevideo, which has long been suing Google on the ground that it illegally abuses its search engine anti-trust power to suffocate competitors.

I wrote about Rumble’s big 2022 victory allowing the case to proceed: pic.twitter.com/AYZO3fLCnA

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 5, 2024

This is theoretically a very big deal.

Apple stock dropped because it’s now illegal for Google to pay Apple $20 billion per year to make Google their default search engine.

Reuters:

A U.S. judge ruled on Monday that Google violated antitrust law, spending billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly and become the world’s default search engine, the first big win for federal authorities taking on Big Tech’s market dominance.

The ruling paves the way for a second trial to determine potential fixes, possibly including a breakup of Google parent Alphabet, which would change the landscape of the online advertising world that Google has dominated for years.

It is also a green light to aggressive U.S. antitrust enforcers prosecuting Big Tech, a sector that has been under fire from across the political spectrum.

“The court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” District Judge Amit Mehta wrote. The search engine giant controls about 90% of the online search market, and 95% on smartphones.

The “remedy” phase could be lengthy, followed by potential appeals to the District of Columbia Circuit and U.S. Supreme Court. The legal wrangling could play out into next year, or even 2026.

Shares of Google parent Alphabet fell 4.5% on Monday as part of a broad tech share decline. Google advertising was 77% of Alphabet’s total sales in 2023.

…

Mehta noted that Google had paid $26.3 billion in 2021 alone to ensure that its search engine is the default on smartphones and browsers, and to keep its dominant market share.

…

The ruling is the first major decision in a series of cases taking on alleged monopolies in Big Tech. This case, filed by the Trump administration, went before a judge from September to November of last year.

We always say the government never does anything good. That’s maybe a slight exaggeration.

This isn’t a minor issue in the scheme of things, but obviously, Google losing market share would be a good thing in theory.

What I will say: it matters a lot less now with AI prepared to make search completely obsolete anyway.

Here’s our statement on today’s decision in the DOJ case:

“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…

— Google Communications (@Google_Comms) August 5, 2024

It’s good to see Google paying a price.

They are clearly unstoppable at this point, and we will have to wait for them to implode like mega corporations do in cyberpunk fiction – but at least we can take some vindication when someone says something to them.

AP:

France’s anti-competition watchdog decided Monday to fine Google 220 million euros ($268 million) for abusing its “dominant position” in the online advertising business, an unprecedented move, the body said.

Practices used by Google “are particularly serious because they penalize Google’s competitors” in certain markets and publishers of mobile sites and applications, the statement by the Competition Authority said.

“The authority recalls that a company in a dominant position is subject to a particular responsibility, that of not undermining,” the statement said.

Google, based in Mountain View, California, did not dispute the facts and opted to settle, proposing changes, the statement said.

The head of the authority, Isabelle de Silva, said the decision was unprecedented.

“(It’s) the first decision in the world to look into complex algorithmic auctions processes through which online display advertising works,” she said.

It may well be unprecedented, but it’s an irrelevant fine.

This is pocket change for Google.

In the words of Steven Seagal: “Without being able to arrest people, when we just fine them, they are probably making more money off the production of the things that are defiling the environment.”

The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center are both key players in deciding what political opinions can and can’t be expressed on the internet.

Nobody in America elected Richard Cohen or Jonathan Greenblatt, but because they have hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal and like-minded, like-nosed co-ethnics leading the major social media companies, they feel they have the right to control what we can say and what we can think.

Their justification for this abuse of power is: “what are you going to do about it, you lowly goyim?”

Over 100 Jewish groups and globalist NGOs get to arbitrarily decide who has rights and who doesn’t. Nobody in our government seems to care because they’re all taken care of (with Silicon Shetl bribes).

Most of these groups know what they’re doing is morally wrong in the eyes of the public, and Google knows some of the groups involved are seen as J-left extremist, so their participation in Google’s censorship and surveillance program is being kept a secret.

Daily Caller:

More than 100 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and government agencies around the world help police YouTube for extremist content, ranging from so-called hate speech to terrorist recruiting videos.

All of them have confidentiality agreements barring Google, YouTube’s parent company, from revealing their participation to the public, a Google representative told The Daily Caller on Thursday.

A handful of groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and No Hate Speech, a European organization focused on combatting intolerance, have chosen to go public with their participation in the program, but the vast majority have stayed hidden behind the confidentiality agreements. Most groups in the program don’t want to be publicly associated with it, according to the Google spokesperson, who spoke only on background.

YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers” program goes back to 2012, but the program has exploded in size in recent years amid a Google push to increase regulation of the content on its platforms, which followed pressure from advertisers. Fifty of the 113 program members joined in 2017 as YouTube stepped up its content policing, YouTube public policy director Juniper Downs told a Senate committee on Wednesday.

So a secret cabal of highly ideological anti-whites controls broad swaths of the internet – that’s a conspiracy.

Secret police shutting down political dissidents? They said it wouldn’t happen here.

What measures can every day folks take to fight back? We can’t petition Google. It’s too big to compete with. There is no mechanism for accountability.

Corporate tyranny is worse than anything the government can come up with because the main culprits are obfuscated.