Is Google a monopoly?" sounds like one of those sarcastic rhetorical questions, like "Is the Pope Catholic?", but this obvious truth has never been officially acknowledged by the US government. That has changed dramatically in the past three months as two different US courts have explicitly ruled that the search giant has abused its market power.

In the most recent case, Epic v. Google, a California court ruled that Google’s Android app store is an "illegal monopoly" and ordered Google to provide a raft of dramatic remedies. Starting from November 1, 2024, for the next three years, Google must distribute competing app stores from within its own store, and must automatically allow these rival stores to list and sell any of the apps listed in its own store.