Google rejects antitrust claims in court filing

Google is pushing back in court on antitrust claims brought against it by the United States Justice Department two months ago.

In a legal filing with the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Google denied or partially rejected almost 200 specific complaints against it. On only one count, that Google was “founded in Menlo Park garage 22 years ago”, did the company side with the Justice Department.

It said that people use its search engine “because they choose to, not because they are forced to or because they cannot easily find alternative ways to search for information on the Internet”.

In October, the Justice Department sued Google for abusing its dominance in online search and advertising. This is the US government’s most significant attempt to protect competition since its groundbreaking case against Microsoft more than 20 years ago.

A tentative trial date of September 12, 2023 has been set for the landmark case.

Google has fiercely denied government allegations that it has illegally struck a series of deals to thwart competition in the search market to help give it a stranglehold on a digital advertising market that has brought in more than $100 billion in revenue to the company during the first nine months of this year alone.

The company’s insistence that it has done nothing wrong makes a pretrial settlement seem unlikely.

AP