• by Wendy Davis , 6 hours ago

Google search users can proceed with an antitrust suit over the company's search deals with Apple and others, a federal judge ruled this week.

The ruling, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Rita Lin, comes around two weeks after she required Google to face a separate antitrust suit over similar allegations.

This newest decision stems from a class-action complaint brought in March 2025 by a Colorado resident named James Attridge. His complaint -- later joined by additional plaintiffs -- largely relied on on findings made in August 2024 by U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, who ruled against Google in an antitrust suit brought by the federal government and a coalition of states.

That suit, like the one by Attridge and others, turned on claims that Google wrongly monopolized search by arranging to serve as the default search engine in Mozilla's Firefox browser and Apple's Safari browser, and to have its search engine preinstalled on Android smartphones.

Mehta specifically found that the company maintained a monopoly in two markets: general search services, and search text ads.

Google urged Lin to dismiss the search users' suit, arguing that the allegations, even if proven true, wouldn't establish that Attridge or other web users had been harmed.

Attridge countered that had Google not monopolized search, other search engines would have emerged that would have differed in significant ways -- such as by paying users for searches, displaying fewer ads, or offering different privacy policies.

Lin sided with the plaintiffs on that point, ruling that their allegations, if proven true, could show that if Google had not monopolized search, competition "would have developed on (1) privacy protections or fewer ads; and (2) compensation for searches."

Google hasn't yet responded to MediaPost's request for comment.