• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

Google has defeated an antitrust lawsuit by consumers who claimed the company's search distribution deals with Apple and others prevented potential rivals from offering search engines that would have been "more privacy protective and ad-free."

In a ruling issued Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Rita Lin in the Northern District of California said the consumers lacked evidence for that claim.

"They submit no expert report, deposition testimony, or declaration to show that better search options could have been available to them if Google had not entered these agreements," Lin wrote in a nine-page order dismissing the case.

Absent intervention by an appellate court, the order brings an end to a battle that began in April 2022, when Mary Katherine Arcell and other search users alleged in an antitrust complaint that Google monopolized search due to its distribution deals.

The U.S. Department of Justice brought similar antitrust claims against Google in 2020.

The Justice Department won that case in 2024, when U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C. ruled that Google's distribution deals allowed it to illegally monopolize search.

Mehta highlighted the privacy implications of Google's monopoly, characterizing DuckDuckGo as a privacy-protective search engine that was hindered by Google's search distribution deals, and a lack of access to data.

DuckDuckGo says it does not save users' IP addresses or any unique identifiers alongside searches.

Mehta also noted that the short-lived subscription-based rival Neeva was unable to gain traction in the search market.

After Mehta ruled, Arcell and the others amended their complaint to include allegations that Google's search deals hindered competitors that offered stronger privacy protections.

Last year, Lin rejected Google's bid to dismiss the case at a relatively early stage. Instead, she allowed the plaintiffs to obtain evidence in preparation for trial.

In June, Google urged Lin to award the company summary judgment, which meant a ruling in its favor based on witness depositions and other evidence developed for trial.

Among other arguments, Google said the plaintiffs' claims that they were injured by the distribution deals rested on "sheer speculation."

Lin subsequently directed the plaintiffs to spell out how they were affected by Google's distribution arrangements.

Counsel for the plaintiffs filed a written response that called attention to Mehta's opinion in the government's antitrust case.

But Lin said the ruling in that matter didn't establish that consumers were harmed.

Mehta "found that Google’s conduct erected various barriers to rivals, but expressly declined to reconstruct what would have happened absent Google’s challenged conduct," Lin wrote.

"Accordingly, those findings do not address plaintiffs’ theory here that high-quality search engines that were more privacy protective or ad free could have been available to them absent Google’s challenged actions," she wrote.