Free Republic

"Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly," Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in his 277-page ruling. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and several dozen state attorneys general had sued Google, accusing the company of paying billions of dollars to Apple, Samsung and other companies to make Google the default search provider on smartphones and web browsers. "This victory against Google is an historic win for the American people," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. "No company—no matter how large or...

A judge on Monday ruled that Google’s ubiquitous search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation in a seismic decision that could shake up the internet and hobble one of the world’s best-known companies. The highly anticipated decision issued by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta comes nearly a year after the start of a trial pitting the U.S. Justice Department against Google in the country’s biggest antitrust showdown in a quarter century. After reviewing reams of evidence that included testimony from top executives at Google, Microsoft and Apple during last year’s 10-week trial, Mehta...

Third rebuke of administration’s transparency this yearThe White House showed “bad faith” in how it handled an open-records request for global warming data, a federal court ruled Monday, issuing yet another stinging rebuke to the administration for showing a lack of transparency. For President Obama, who vowed to run the most transparent government in U.S. history, Judge Amit P. Mehta’s ruling granting legal “discovery” in an open-records case — the third time this year a judge has ordered discovery — is an embarrassing black eye. In this most recent case, the Competitive Enterprise Institute was trying to force the White...