A U.S. federal judge has ruled that Google, owned by (NASDAQ: GOOGL), has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, indicating that the company has unfairly acted to maintain a monopoly.

The heart of the government's antitrust case centered on exclusive deals the company struck with smartphone makers such as Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Samsung to be the default search engine of their mobile devices. These deals have become quite large over the years. For example, Google has a reported $8 billion, four-year deal with Samsung, while a revenue-sharing deal with Apple is believed to be worth over $20 billion a year. In 2021, Alphabet paid over $26 billion to provide the default search engine on various smartphones and web browsers.

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Source Fool.com