Table of Contents
MRC Staff
Anti-free speech Google has been hit with multiple antitrust lawsuits.
Google suffered an epically devastating defeat in federal court on Dec. 11 after EPIC Games Inc., the company that created Fortnite, successfully sued Google. This lawsuit stems from Google’s decision to ban EPIC Games after the company attempted to help its customers circumvent a 30% surcharge paid to Google on all EPIC games purchases. This is far from the only antitrust case Google has faced over the last few years.
Private, state and federal actors have criticized Google’s monopoly, including the Department of Justice and the founders of the social media app Rumble.
Google banned several social media apps popular with conservatives in Jan. 2021, including Rumble and Parler. As a consequence, Google drew a lawsuit from Rumble for its “anticompetitive and exclusionary practices.”
The previous year, Google was on the receiving end of not one, not two, but three scathing antitrust lawsuits from two coalitions of states and the Department of Justice. Specifically, the DOJ alleged that Google was illegally maintaining monopolies in “general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising.”
According to Business Insider, 90% of internet searches take place on Google and YouTube, which is owned by Google, amounting to billions of searches a day. The DOJ argued that Google reached its current complete dominance of internet searches by paying companies such as Apple to make Google the default on their products.
Google has also faced antitrust lawsuits abroad in the United Kingdom and the European Union.
Google’s dominance should concern conservatives, as the anti-free speech behemoth, not only helped ban social media apps on the right but also frequently buried the websites of Republican candidates for the presidency and other offices. Google has frequently engaged in censorship, including by taking down Pro-Life ads at the behest of pro-abortion activists.
