Google was pummeled by antitrust lawsuits in December. 2024 could be even worse

Today, a federal judge ruled Alphabet’s Google must defend itself against antitrust charges brought by 16 states sooner than it had hoped.

Five days ago, Google settled a separate lawsuit—a $5 billion class-action privacy lawsuit claiming the company had secretly tracked consumers in “incognito” mode.

Ten days before that, Google announced it would pay $700 million to settle a lawsuit in which all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands argued that Google’s app store was an illegal monopoly that overcharged consumers.

And the week prior to that, the jury in a monthlong antitrust case brought by Fortnite maker, Epic Games, ruled unanimously against Google, after only three hours of deliberations. No monetary damages were awarded, but the wholesale drubbing (Epic won all 11 of its antitrust claims) is expected to put more of Google’s money into app developers’ pockets—billions, according to some estimates.

And believe it or not, the very day before the Epic ruling, Google got hit with an entirely different class-action lawsuit alleging similar antitrust violations, but accusing Google’s AI, including its chatbot Bard, of worsening the problem.

Observers slapped this slew of filings, settlements, and rulings with dramatic adjectives like “stunning” (the Epic case) and “unprecedented” (Google’s settlement in the privacy case). The string of losses by what was once the planet’s most powerful tech company, according to global data firm Kantar, might ordinarily suggest that the company should seek new legal counsel—or at least, copies of Antitrust Law for Dummies for every employee in Mountain View. But what is behind this streak, and where did it come from so suddenly?

The lawsuits—the ones brought by the government, anyway—mark climaxes of a regulatory backlash years in the making, assisted by both Republicans and Democrats who believe Big Tech has too much sway over almost every facet of our daily lives. The final sum Google must surrender in fines and damages won’t be known until the court decides this year. And antitrust experts worry that Google may find ways to stall coming into regulatory compliance, on top of appealing those cases.

But regardless, it may all serve as a preview of what’s to come. A year from now, the tech giant could be scrambling to make sweeping, court-ordered changes to its business practices, while bouncing from courtroom to courtroom to try to win the appeals.

December’s barrage of legal action was also a tease, a precursor to two bigger antitrust cases looming on the horizon: U.S. v. Google—potentially a landmark case in which the Justice Department is trying to force Google to divest from ad tech—represents the first monopoly trial of the modern internet era. It’s already drawing comparisons to Microsoft’s legendary antitrust battle that stretched from the mid-1990s to 2001. Google will need to start making closing arguments for this in May.

A separate antitrust case is pending, meanwhile, in federal court in Washington, D.C.. Here, the Justice Department is targeting Google’s search engine ad practices. This case is similar to Texas v. Google, the one Google learned today will be starting earlier than it wanted (in March 2025, instead of later that year).

Finally, this is simply the mess Google faces at home. In Europe, there’s more, including a very large fine: In June, the European Commission said Google had broken antitrust laws by leveraging its control of digital ads to hurt rivals, essentially reiterating the Justice Department’s charges. This sucked Google into a new series of legal proceedings and earned it a fine of more than $8 billion, though it’s currently in the process of appealing these legal decisions, too.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91004908/list-of-antitrust-privacy-lawsuits-google-is-facing-in-2024?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss