The US has taken Google to court for allegedly rigging the internet search market. Here's what has happened so far

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The US government has told a federal court that Google has exploited its position as 'the gatekeeper of the internet' to destroy competition.

Antonio Rangel, a behavioural economist from the California Institute of Technology who testified for the US government, said that switching default search engines on a devices wasn't always easy, and consumers were often reluctant to change their behaviour.

Google is pushing for discussions of how it prices its online advertising to be held in closed court, which means the public and reporters must leave the room — that's something the DOJ has objected to, citing public interest in the case. If he decides Google broke the law, it could be ordered to stop any practices found to be illegal, or may be ordered to sell some of its assets.

Alphabet is now worth around $US1.7 trillion , with most of its money coming from $US224 billion in annual ad sales partially fed by the Google Search engine. The last major Big Tech antitrust trial in the US was against Microsoft in 1998, when the US government accused the company of forcing computer manufacturers which relied on its popular Windows operating system to also use Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser.

 

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