What is at risk in the antitrust lawsuit against Google? Billions of money (as well as our online habits)

After going through a taxing 10-week trial last fall that was mainly closed to the public, District Judge Amit Mehta is anticipated to make a ruling later this year. Closing arguments in the case are scheduled to continue through Friday.

The decision might have a significant impact on the tech sector, acting as a predictor not only for the billions Google pays to Apple, wireless carriers, and other device manufacturers but also for the numerous tech antitrust cases that are pending in court.

Government lawyers representing Google in this case contend that the company’s search engine became the global standard on millions of devices and browsers, allowing Google to retain an illegal monopoly through a network of contracts.

According to the DOJ, the partnerships gave Google the opportunity to establish an unstoppable search engine that sucked up more and more user-generated data, allowing it to continuously improve its product at the expense of legitimate competition. Microsoft informed the court throughout the trial that Google is attempting to use the advantage it has over search data to its advantage by using vast amounts of private search queries to train its models.

Google has maintained that its Android operating system, which competes with Apple, is supported by its search engine, which users prefer because it is the best, not because of anticompetitive behavior. According to Google, nothing stopped Apple from selecting a different default search partner.

However, lawyers for the DOJ have questioned the rationale behind Google’s contracts and payments. They have questioned why Google spends tens of billions of dollars a year to be the default search engine worldwide when their product is genuinely superior to that of the competition and switching search engines is as simple as Google says.