What Next for Google? Insights from the First Two Sessions in the Google-Apple Tentative Competition Case (before Mehta)
The case before Mehta traced back to the increased oversight of the tech industry under then president Donald Trump. The first Big Tech companies to go to trial after the Justice Department suedGoogle in 2020 were companies like Apple, Dell, and Microsoft.
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 for Google shared that the company shares in revenue from its search business with Apple. Apple got $20 billion from Google for the default position in 2022, it was reported.
The decision was called a historic win by the United States Attorney General. Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter said it “paves the path for innovation for generations to come.”
There are yet to be decisions on how to change business in light of the judgments in San Francisco and Washington. Mehta will hold a separate trial to determine remedies in the search case, and a judge is mulling proposed penalties in the Play litigation. But some changes Google has made in response to antitrust scrutiny in recent years 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 discovered that the deals with partners harm competition and that they weren’t shown otherwise.
The experts will be presented before Mehta, who will then issue another opinion and order. It is not clear how the exact time period will be. A former Federal Trade Commission chair and a professor at George Washington University said he expects a weeklong hearing on remedies this year and thinks the process could last through the end of 2024.
Rebecca Haw Allensworth, an antitrust professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, expects a fight that could take up to a year. Allensworth says that gnashing of teeth will cause it to take a long time.
A milder remedy, which Kovacic finds most likely, is an injunction that “directs Google to cease the conduct that the court found to be improper.” But even that includes changes that could range from trivial to seismic. Mehta could demand Google modify its multibillion-dollar deals with companies like Apple and Mozilla, for instance, which cement it as the default search engine on products like the iPhone.
The decision of the Supreme Court could come by 2026 according to Kovacic, a Cornell professor at Cornell University and Hay’s law professor at the University of New England
The Supreme Court could make a decision by the end of 2026 according to Kovacic. George Hay, a law professor at Cornell University, gave The AP a five-year timetable.
