US goes after Google for unfair market practices

As expected, the US Justice Department has filed a landmark antitrust case against Google. The search giant is accused of abusing its monopoly to force unfair contract terms upon suppliers and competitors. ARS Technica offers some analysis over here. The focus of the antitrust case is on Google's search business. There are no specific details in the paperwork about what sort of relief the government seeks. Nothing is reportedly off the table, but there's no confirmation about plans to break up Google.

The complaint (PDF) lays out the case that Google used "exclusionary agreements and anticompetitive conduct" to become dominant in the search marketplace, and then kept abusing that market dominance to prevent nascent rivals from gaining enough of a toehold potentially to become real competition.

The suit is focused on Google's search business, including search advertising and "general search text advertising," which the DOJ alleges the company has "monopolized" for more than a decade.