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United States DOJ v. Google LLC: Federal Antitrust Case 2020-2025 Summary

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For the last few months, I’ve been down a rabbit hole.

Like many of you in the SEO world, I’ve been obsessively tracking the bombshells that came out of the US Department of Justice’s antitrust trial against Google. It started with a focus on the SEO gold: sworn testimony from executives like Pandu Nayak finally confirming how ranking systems like NavBoost work, the real role of user clicks, and the structure of the algorithm.

It felt like decades of speculation were being replaced by a new canon of truth, right there in the public record and with the Content Warehouse data leak, and an exploit all being presented at the same time it seemed like too good an opportunity for me not to finish my work in this area.

The more I sifted through the mountain of court documents, trial transcripts, and internal emails, the more I realised something crucial: I was so focused on the what that I hadn’t fully grasped the why.

I was digging into the technical details without fully understanding the colossal legal battle that was forcing these secrets into the light. What was this historic case actually about?

This article is the result of that multi-level research.

So, I’ve structured this piece to first walk you through the core antitrust allegations – the accusations of monopoly power, the multi-billion-pound deals, and the internal pressures that drive the company.

Then, with that context established, we’ll dive deep into the revelations that matter most to us and what they mean for the future of our industry.

Feature United States v. Google LLC (2020) United States v. Google LLC (2023)
Core Allegation Unlawfully maintaining monopolies in search and search advertising markets. Illegally monopolising the advertising technology (“ad-tech”) market.
Presiding Court U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Judge Amit P. Mehta) U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Judge Leonie Brinkema)
Key Trial Dates September – November 2023 September 2024
Verdict Google found to have illegally maintained its monopoly (August 2024). Google found to have illegally monopolised the ad-tech market (April 2025).
Current Status Remedies phase completed (September 2025); Google intends to appeal. Remedies phase pending; Google intends to appeal.

Part I: The Search Monopoly Case (United States v. Google, 2020)

Seal of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
United States v. Google LLC is an ongoing federal antitrust case brought by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) against Google LLC on October 20, 2020. The suit alleges that Google has violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 by illegally monopolising the search engine and search advertising markets, most notably on Android devices, as well as with Apple and mobile carriers.

The main event for our industry was the case against Google’s search monopoly. The core of the DOJ’s argument was that Google maintains its near-total market share not just through quality, but through a “self-reinforcing cycle of monopolisation”.

In simple terms, Google pays billions to be the default search engine everywhere, which guarantees it a massive volume of search queries. This data then allows it to improve its algorithms and ad tools, making its product better and leaving competitors starved of the data they need to catch up.

The Power of Defaults: The Apple Deal and Nadella’s Testimony

The most stunning example was the deal with Apple. It was revealed that Google paid Apple a staggering $20 billion in 2022 alone to be the default search engine in Safari. To put that in perspective, this single deal made up 17.5% of Apple’s entire operating income in 2020. The partnership was so lucrative that Apple executive Eddy Cue admitted he had “lost sleep over the possibility of losing the revenue share”.

This is where the trial validated a core concept we SEOs have understood for years: user inertia is incredibly powerful. The government’s star witness, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, drove this point home. He dismissed Google’s claim that users can easily switch as “completely bogus” and delivered the most memorable line of the trial for anyone in our field: “Defaults are the only thing that matters”.

When a Google lawyer tried to frame the company’s market share as simple popularity, Nadella’s response was perfect: “You can call it popular, but to me it’s dominant”. He explained the power of habit with an analogy we can all relate to: “You get up in the morning, brush your teeth and search on Google”. His testimony confirmed that Google’s dominance isn’t just about winning a daily choice; it’s about an entrenched position fortified by billions of pounds in exclusionary contracts.

Google’s Own Words: The Damning Internal Evidence

Perhaps the most validating evidence came from Google itself. While its lawyers argued “competition is a click away,” the company’s internal research told a very different story.

One document admitted that “[s]eemingly small friction points in user experiences can have a dramatically disproportionate effect on whether people drop or stick”. Other studies showed “substantial user confusion” about which search engine was even set as the default.

This created a massive credibility gap.

Google was arguing in court that users actively choose its product, while its own data scientists knew that defaults and user inertia were the real drivers. It suggested the billions paid to Apple weren’t just an investment in a great product, but an insurance policy against competition.

To make matters worse, the DOJ accused Google of systematically destroying evidence through its “history off” chat policy, where internal messages were automatically deleted after 24 hours.

The government presented training documents where Google told employees that “‘off the record’ chats are ‘[b]etter than sending [an] email'”.

Employees were caught in chats saying things like, “We have history off so that we can speak (more) freely”

Judge James Donato, in a related case, called the practice a “frontal assault on the fair administration of justice”.

Part II: The Revenue Engine Under the Bonnet

For those of us on the front lines of Google Ads and organic search, this is where the trial got really interesting. The testimony revealed the intense pressure within Google to meet revenue targets and the mechanisms used to achieve them, confirming many of our long-held suspicions.

‘Code Yellow’ and the Pressure on Organic Search

In February 2019, Google declared a “Code Yellow” emergency over fears it would miss its quarterly revenue goals.

This was an “all-hands-on-deck call to action… to extract even additional revenue from advertisers to meet Wall Street earnings forecasts,” according to a DOJ lawyer.

****Engineers from the supposedly independent search and Chrome teams were reassigned to help the ads team figure out how to boost revenue.***

This created a huge internal conflict. Ben Gomes, then a Vice President of Search, expressed his alarm in emails that were shown in court. He wrote that he was concerned “we are getting too close to the money” and “we are getting too involved with ads for the good of the product and company”.

He drew a clear line: “I think it is fine for us to help investigate query loss, but not to help with revenue loss“. He even diagnosed the problem as “user negativity caused by engagement hacking“.

This validates the feeling many of us have had for years: that the user-first mantra has often been at odds with financial pressures. Another executive, Nick Fox, captured the new reality in an email to Gomes: “Given that (a) [we are] responsible for Search, (b) Search is the revenue engine of the company, and (c) revenue is weak, it seems like this is our new reality of our jobs?”.

‘Shaking the Cushions’ and Manipulating the Auction

The pressure was most vividly described by Jerry Dischler, Google’s VP of Ads. In an email, he wrote that his team was “shaking the cushions” to find ways to hit their numbers for Wall Street. He was brutally honest about the stakes: “If we don’t hit plan… we miss the street’s expectations again… so we get punished pretty badly in the market”.

His testimony revealed that Google “frequently” makes undisclosed changes to its ad auctions to increase prices. He admitted, “We tend not to tell advertisers about pricing changes,” and confirmed these “tunings” could raise prices by 5-10%.

Two specific manipulation techniques were detailed:

  • Squashing: A method to artificially raise “the price against the highest bidder” to make the auction more competitive and increase the final cost.
  • Randomized Generalized Second-Price (RGSP): A system where Google could randomly give the top ad slot to the second-highest bidder. An internal email described this as a way to “‘raise prices… in small increments over time (AKA ‘inflation’)'” without improving ad quality.

When another executive, Dr. Adam Juda, was asked if the ads team tries to raise prices, his response was telling: “I would describe it less as raising prices and more coming up with better prices or more fair prices, where those new prices are higher than the previous ones“.

For any advertiser, this confirmed that the auction isn’t a level playing field; the house has its thumb on the scale.

Part III: The Ad-Tech Case in Brief

While the search trial provided the most direct insights for SEO, the parallel case against Google’s ad-tech business was just as important. It is alleged that Google illegally monopolised the entire stack of technology that publishers use to sell ad space and advertisers use to buy it.

The DOJ’s case was built around a powerful analogy from one of Google’s own executives, who worried the company was “owning the platform, the exchange and a huge network”, comparing it to a situation where “Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE”.

Evidence showed a clear intent to dominate, with one 2009 document from an executive instructing colleagues to “crush” the competition.

Witnesses from major publishers like Gannett testified they felt they had “no choice” but to use Google’s full suite of products, even when they suspected they were on the “losing end of the deal”.

The court ultimately agreed, finding Google had illegally monopolised the ad-tech market, a decision Google also intends to appeal.

Part IV: A New Canon of SEO Truth

As an SEO, the legal drama is fascinating, but the real gold was the sworn testimony that confirmed, for the first time, how Google’s ranking systems actually work. This wasn’t speculation or a leaked document without context; this was Google’s own Vice President of Search, Pandu Nayak, explaining the architecture under oath.

For SEOs, this is the new canon.

The Two Pillars: Quality (Q*) and Popularity (P*)

The trial revealed that Google’s system ultimately boils down to two “fundamental top-level ranking signals” that determine a webpage’s score: Quality (Q*) and Popularity (P*).

  • *Quality (Q)**: This signal assesses the trustworthiness and authority of a website. It is heavily influenced by PageRank, which measures a site’s “distance from a known good source.”

  • *Popularity (P)**: This signal measures how widely visited and well-linked a page is. It is directly powered by Chrome visit data and user interaction signals from NavBoost.

The Primacy of User Clicks and NavBoost

For years, Google’s public-facing employees have been coy about the role of clicks in rankings. The trial ended that debate. Nayak’s testimony confirmed unequivocally that Google does use clicks for ranking.

This is done through a system called NavBoost, one of Google’s most important ranking signals.

It works by analysing a rolling 13-month window of aggregated user click data. As the court documents stated, “Learning from this user feedback is perhaps the central way that web ranking has improved for 15 years.” Every click is training data that tells Google, “for this query, a human believed that result would be most relevant.”

This confirms what many of us have long believed: creating helpful content that genuinely satisfies users and earns clicks is not just good practice—it’s a direct ranking factor.

A Modular, “Hand-Crafted” Architecture

The trial also demystified Google’s algorithm, revealing it’s not some unknowable AI black box. Instead, it’s a “modular, engineered architecture” where “hand-crafted” signals still form the backbone. This is huge for us, as it means the foundational principles of SEO are still very much alive.

  • Links and Authority: PageRank was explicitly confirmed as a key quality signal, putting to rest any debate about the importance of building high-quality, authoritative backlinks.

  • Anchor Text: The clickable text in a hyperlink provides a “valuable clue” to a page’s relevance, helping Google understand what the page is about from external sources—see Topicality (T*).

  • Freshness: For queries where timeliness is important, Google boosts recent content. A system called “Instant Glue” uses a 24-hour log of user interaction data to elevate fresh results in near real-time.

Machine learning models like RankBrain and BERT act as a final refinement layer to better understand semantics, rather than replacing these foundational signals. This modular structure matches insights from the Google Content Warehouse leak.

The Final Layer: Context and Personalisation

Finally, the testimony reinforced that context is king. Location and personalisation were identified as dominant factors for many queries, and a user’s individual search history helps resolve ambiguity. The “ten blue links” are not a universal truth—they are a bespoke answer sheet tailored to each user’s implicit needs.

To master this, SEOs must focus on Entity SEO and the E-E-A-T framework, ensuring every page clearly communicates who is responsible for it and why it should be trusted, as explained in Section 2.5.2 of the Quality Rater Guidelines.

Part V: The Verdict and Its Aftermath

After all the testimony, the verdicts in both the search and ad-tech cases were decisive: the courts found Google to be an illegal monopolist that had abused its power. Judge Amit P. Mehta’s conclusion in the search case was blunt: “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”

While the DOJ pushed for a full break-up, including selling off the Chrome browser, Judge Mehta opted for more targeted behavioural remedies.

  • A Ban on Exclusive Contracts: Google is now prohibited from paying for exclusive default status.

  • Data Sharing: For five years, Google must make some search index and user-interaction data available to competitors.

The ban on exclusive deals is significant, but the data-sharing requirement is potentially revolutionary. It’s a direct attempt to break the “data flywheel” that has protected Google’s monopoly for so long. However, the judge’s reluctance to break up the company, citing the rapid rise of AI, shows a cautious approach to reshaping Big Tech.

Conclusion: The End of the Beginning

The DOJ’s showdown with Google has been a landmark event for our industry. While Google avoided a full break-up, the rules of the game have been altered. The company has been officially branded a monopolist, and its core strategy of paying for defaults has been outlawed.

For myself and across the SEO community, the biggest win is the knowledge we’ve gained. The trial has provided a new canon of truth, replacing speculation with sworn testimony. We now know for a fact that user engagement, site-wide authority, and high-quality links are not just correlated with success – they are fundamental pillars of Google’s ranking systems.

This confirmed knowledge allows us to move forward with strategies built on a more solid foundation than ever before. The game is still complex, but the rulebook is finally a little more open.

Further Reading:

References

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