The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday sued Google for alleged antitrust violations, saying it abused its dominance in online search and advertising to stifle competition and harm consumers.
The government alleged that Google uses billions of dollars collected from advertisements on its platform to pay for mobile-phone manufacturers, carriers and browsers, like Apple Inc's Safari, to maintain Google as their preset, default search engine, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of dominance.
Filed in a Washington DC court, the case represents the most aggressive act by the U.S. government to mount a challenge against a tech giant since it sued Microsoft more than 20 years ago.
The suit is likely to take years to be resolved but could be the first round in investigations by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission of other major tech companies, including Apple, Amazon and Facebook at both the Justice Department (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission.
The suit alleges that Google has entered into exclusionary contracts with phone makers to preload its search engine onto devices using parent company Alphabet's Android operating system.
Those contracts have allowed Google to maintain a monopoly while stifling competition and innovation, the suit contends. It also accuses Google of using profits from that monopoly to buy preferential treatment for its search engine on web browsers, including Safari.
Estimates of Google's control of the market for online searches range from 80 percent to 90 percent, resulting in tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue.
"Google achieved some success in its early years, and no one begrudges that," Deputy U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said. "If the government does not enforce its antitrust laws to enable competition, we could lose the next wave of innovation. If that happens, Americans may never get to see the next Google."
Kent Walker, Google's chief legal officer, said in a statement that the lawsuit was deeply flawed. "People use Google because they choose to 鈥
