Meta, Google Hammered in Court in Sign of Rare Left-Right Unity
Google will square off against the Justice Department and dozens of state attorneys general over what changes the judge will order to prevent the company from monopolizing the online search market.
Photographer: Kent Nishimura/BloombergTwo tech giants — Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc. — were stung hard in antitrust trials in different rooms of the same federal courthouse this week. It’s a reflection of rare bipartisan enthusiasm for punishing them, efforts that spanned the Trump and Biden administrations.
In proceedings in Washington, where a federal judge is weighing how to resolve Google’s monopoly in search, an executive made a startling admission: that Google pays Samsung an “enormous sum” to preinstall its Gemini AI app, even though courts have twice found those kinds of deals illegal. The revelation could give the government ammo for devising a penalty that hurts Google’s position in artificial intelligence.