U.S. wraps up antitrust case against Google in historic trial

In the trial, which started in September, the Justice Department sought to prove that Google is a monopolist and illegally abused its power for profits.

The U.S. government hammered away at its main arguments against Alphabet's Google on Thursday, wrapping up the evidentiary phase of a court battle in which it has accused the online search leader of breaking antitrust law to stay on top.

In the trial, which started on September 12, the Justice Department sought to prove that Google is a monopolist and illegally abused its power to favour its bottom line.

Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said he was undecided on which way to rule. "I have no idea what I'm going to do," he said after setting closing arguments for early May.

This case, filed by the Trump administration, was the first of four aimed at reining in tech leaders. The second, against Meta, was also filed during the Trump administration while Biden's antitrust enforcers have followed with a second case against Google as well as one against Amazon.com.

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MIT economics professor Michael Whinston, the government's final witness on the final day of the evidentiary phase, hit the high points of the government's case.

He disagreed with Google that it had to compete with Microsoft to be exclusively pre-installed on smartphones. Google's payments to Apple and others, totaling $26.3 billion in 2021, were essentially monopoly profits paid to distributors, he said.