After more than a year of investigations, the United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust complaint^[1] against Google LLC to prevent the company from “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States through anticompetitive and exclusionary practices, and to remedy the effects of this conduct.”

The complaint, filed Oct. 20, claims that the “scrappy startup” that pledged to not be evil^[2] is long gone, replaced with a voracious monopolist that is worth more than USD 1 trillion, gobbles up competitors, and forces partners to set Google as their default search engine.

“Google is the gateway to the internet and a search advertising behemoth,” said Deputy Attorney General Jeff Rosen.^[3] “Google achieved some success in its early years, and no one begrudges that, but, as the antitrust complaint filed today explains, it has maintained its monopoly power through exclusionary practices that harm competition. So the Justice Department has determined that an antitrust response is necessary to benefit consumers. If the government does not enforce the antitrust laws to enable competition, we will lose the next wave of innovation. If that happens, Americans may never get to see the ‘next Google.’”