Google’s lawsuit history: The biggest legal cases against the search giant, including antitrust and class-action suits

Google recently lost a monumental antitrust case that could have massive implications for both Google and the internet writ large.

Google is one of the world’s largest and most influential companies and the most popular search engine by far. So it’s no surprise that the search giant’s rapidly evolving and boundary-pushing technology would attract litigation over the course of its 25-year history.

Google has been sued in dozens, if not hundreds of high-profile controversies over privacy, intellectual property, discrimination, advertising, and even defamation, and has racked up both wins and losses over the years.

Some of Google’s most consequential legal cases have occurred in 2023 and 2024, including two federal antitrust cases and several class-action lawsuits. Here’s what you need to know about the biggest recent cases to land on Google’s docket.

Why did the US government sue Google over antitrust violations?

The US government’s battle against Google has resulted in two major antitrust cases. One case is still ongoing, while Google lost one antitrust case in August 2024, when a federal judge ruled that Google’s search business violated antitrust laws.

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” US District Judge Amit Mehta said in his ruling.

Mehta’s ruling came nearly one year after a landmark monopoly trial in the fall of 2023. The dispute centered on whether Google has illegally abused its monopoly over the search engine industry, spending billions of dollars each year to suppress competition. The US government argued that Google’s business dealings have blocked innovation in the search business to the detriment of internet users.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified in the antitrust trial in October 2023. In his testimony, Pichai defended instances in which Google pushed companies like Apple and other smartphone makers into revenue-sharing agreements that would make Google the default search engine on phones and computers.

CEO Sundar Pichai was Google’s star witness who testified on the company’s deals with smartphone makers to make Google the default search engine.

The Google CEO acknowledged on the stand that company executives knew that becoming the default search engine on smartphones “would lead to increased usage of our products and services.”

Mehta’s ruling found that the payments, in exchange for becoming the default search engine, amounted to an illegal monopoly.

The second major antitrust case against Google concerns its online advertising strategies, and went to trial in September 2024.

The US government, in the adtech case, alleged that Google illegally monopolized the digital advertising market by acquiring its competitors and forcing website publishers to adopt Google’s tools, such as Google Ads, thereby suppressing the rise of rival technologies.

During the trial, advertising executives from competitors and former Google employees highlighted the company’s lack of transparency regarding its advertising practices and its massive market power as support for the Justice Department’s claims.

Closing arguments were held on November 25. During the final hearing, lawyers for Google argued that the company had earned its success in the advertising market by offering a product superior to that of its rivals.

US District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema is overseeing the advertising case and has a reputation for quickly moving cases through her docket, though it remains unclear when her decision will be issued.

Brinkema is expected to rule on the dispute without a jury, and could order remedies including potentially forcing Google to sell off its digital advertising unit.

Google denied wrongdoing in both cases. The search giant argued during its 2023 trial that Google dominates the search business because it’s superior to its rivals, not because of its business dealings. Google has similarly denied the claims in the advertising-related monopoly case, saying its acquisitions were legal, enabled innovative new advertising technologies, and that the federal government’s lawsuit could undo years of industry progress.

What happens now that Google has lost an antitrust case?

Now that Google has lost one antitrust lawsuit, Mehta is expected to order some sort of action to boost competition in the search engine business. Google could face consequences like orders to adjust its business practices, or even a total ban on its contracts to make Google the default search engine.

The Department of Justice has proposed that Google be forced to sell its Chrome browser as a remedy in the case in an effort to level the playing field between Google and its competitors. Such a sale could result in Google raking in proceeds in the range of $15 billion to $20 billion, Peter Cohan, a professor of management practice at Babson College, previously told B-17.

“The playing field is not level because of Google’s conduct, and Google’s quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired. The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages,” the DOJ’s proposal states.

The DOJ also asked the judge to bar Google from paying smartphone makers to make Google the default search engine.

Mehta has not yet issued his final decision regarding remedies in the search case. The judge has set a two-week hearing in April 2025 to hear arguments over what remedies Google must take to address the search-related antitrust violations and plans to make a final ruling by the following August.

“The DOJ continues to push a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, the vice president of Google’s regulatory affairs, previously told B-17 in a statement following a report that included limited details of the Justice Department’s proposal. “The government putting its thumb on the scale in these ways would harm consumers, developers and American technological leadership at precisely the moment it is most needed.”

Both antitrust cases carry potentially massive implications for internet users — Google could face a break-up or sanctions that alter its operations so dramatically that it loses its ubiquity in the search and advertising industries, paving the way for new companies and technologies to flourish.

Google’s federal antitrust cases will also likely influence the outcomes of other antitrust lawsuits the US government has filed against major tech companies. Currently, Amazon, Apple, and Meta all face similar antitrust lawsuits against their business practices that could threaten their market dominance.

What to know about Google’s class-action settlements and who can claim money

Google has been the subject of two major class-action lawsuits that were resolved or nearing resolution in late 2023 and 2024.

One of the most hotly anticipated resolutions was a class-action case involving personal data collected from 136 million Google Chrome users. The lawsuit accused Google of tracking the internet activity of users who had switched to Google’s “incognito” setting.

As part of a settlement agreement, Google said it would delete the search data collected from those 136 million users, which Google said was merely “old personal technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.”

Lawyers initially sought a $5 billion payout for consumers, but anyone expecting to receive a chunk of that money will need to sue Google individually to receive any damages. The settlement agreement for the class-action case did not include any monetary damages to be paid out by Google.

Google settled a class-action antitrust case involving the Google Play Store for $700 million.

Google does, however, have to pay out roughly $700 million as part of a separate class-action case involving the Google Play Store. Attorneys general from five states accused Google of using monopoly tactics to box out competitors to the Google Play Store and limited users’ ability to download Android apps from other app stores.

An estimated 102 million consumers were affected between August 16, 2016, and September 30, 2023, and are entitled to compensation of at least $2, the settlement agreement stipulated. Consumers who are eligible for the Google settlement don’t need to submit any sort of claim to get that money, however. Consumers will receive automatic payments through PayPal or Venmo.

Google’s battle over Europe’s “right to be forgotten” laws

Google lost a landmark “right to be forgotten” case in 2014, but won a victory in 2019 when an EU court said the ruling was limited only to the European Union.

One of Google’s biggest legal battles in the 2010s concerned the European Court of Justice’s “right to be forgotten” ruling and whether Google was responsible for personal data that appears in its search results. Google lost its case in 2014, and the EU court ruled that individuals have the right to remove information about themselves from search engine results.

Under the ruling, Google must respond to legitimate requests from individuals to delist webpages from its search results. Larry Page, one of Google’s founders and a former CEO, spoke out vehemently against the EU court’s “right to be forgotten” ruling at the time, warning that repressive foreign governments could abuse the ruling.

However, in 2019, Google won a “right to be forgotten” victory in a subsequent EU court ruling, which stipulated that Google only has to delist content from search results in Europe, and the “right to be forgotten” does not apply globally.

Recent research has suggested that Google and Microsoft together have received some 150,000 “right to be forgotten” requests to delist search results each year since the EU court’s ruling in 2014. The vast majority of the links targeted for delisting were from Facebook, X, and YouTube.