A blockbuster antitrust trial is underway in Washington, DC, where the United States Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys general have accused Alphabet’s Google of unlawfully abusing its dominance in the search engine market to maintain monopoly power.

The Justice Department and 52 attorneys general representing US states or territories say Google unfairly forged its domination of online search by paying billions of dollars to Apple and other business partners to ensure its search engine would be the default on most phones and browsers.

The government’s lawsuit, filed in 2020 in federal court, alleges these deals were intended by Google to be “exclusionary”, denying rivals access to search queries and clicks, and allowing Google to entrench its market dominance.

Google has grabbed a 90 percent market share in search in the US in recent years, according to government estimates.

Al Jazeera’s Colin Baker explains.

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