The US Justice Department has announced they are suing Google for antitrust violations. The crux of the legal matter stems from this line in the filing, “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States.”
If you don’t mind a bit of dry legal jargon and extensive reading, the full filing is available here and it is quite interesting the information they have collected during their investigation.
While other companies (some negatively affected by Google’s anti-competitive practices) begin weighing in, even Mozilla has weighed in on the case. It’s no secret that Mozilla relies heavily on its agreement with Google and search (also cited in the legal filing) so its opinion should be taken with a grain of salt.
If anything, I am disappointed by Mozilla’s response. The fact they basically feel the need to say, “Hey, we need Google’s money, please be careful” goes against their image of being pro-privacy, anti-monopoly. Google probably only funds Mozilla so they can proclaim to not be a monopoly, a shell corporation of sorts to make Google look fair.
Whether or not that case will have the same wide sweeping impact that the Microsoft case did, remains to be seen. It is ironic that the case brought against Microsoft in the ’90s paved the way for companies like Google to exist and grow, only for Google to itself become an eventual target.
