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Google Anti-trust Case
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a major makeover of Google's search engine in a crackdown aimed at curbing the corrosive power of an illegal monopoly, but rebuffed the US government's request to break up the company. The 226-page decision made by US District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, DC, will likely ripple across the technological landscape at a time when the industry is being reshaped by artificial intelligence breakthroughs including conversational answer engines as companies like ChatGPT and Perplexity try to upend Google's long-held position as the internet's main gateway. Mehta is trying to rein in Google by placing new restraints on some of the tactics the company deployed to drive traffic to its search engine and other services. But the judge stopped short of banning the multi-billion dollar deals that Google has been making for years to lock in its search engine as the default on smartphones, personal computers and other devices. Those deals, involving payments of .
Google has agreed to pay a 55 million Australian dollar ($36 million) fine for signing anticompetitive deals with Australia's two largest telcos that banned the installation of competing search engines on some smartphones, the US tech giant and Australia's competition watchdog said. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said in a statement it had commenced proceedings in the Australian Federal Court on Monday against the Singapore-based Google Asia Pacific division. The court will decide whether the AU$50 million ($36 million) penalty is appropriate. Under the anticompetitive agreements, which were in place for 15 months until March 2021, Telstra and Optus only pre-installed Google Search on Android phones sold to customers. Other search engines were excluded. In return, the telcos received a share of the advertisement revenue Google generated from those customers. Google accepted that the agreements were likely to have the effect of substantially lessening competition,
A federal judge on Friday delayed an order requiring Google to open up its Android app store to more competition until an appeals court decides whether to block the shake-up because of legal questions surrounding a jury's verdict that branded Google as an illegal monopolist. The delay granted during a court hearing in San Francisco comes less than two weeks after US District Judge James Donato issued a decision that would have forced Google to make sweeping changes to its Play Store for Android smartphones starting November 1. The mandated changes included a provision that would have required Google to make its library of more than 2 million Android apps available to any rivals that wanted access to the inventory and also distribute the alternative options in its own Play Store. Google requested Donato's order be stayed until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals could examine the handling of a month-long trial that led to the December 2023 verdict, which framed the Play Store as an ..
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