Google rejects US Justice Department antitrust claims in court filing

In a legal filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Google denied or partially rejected almost 200 specific complaints against it. On only one count, that Google was a ``founded in Menlo Park garage 22 years ago,'' did the company side with the Justice Department.

It said that people use its search engine ``because they choose to, not because they are forced to or because they cannot easily find alternative ways to search for information on the Internet.``

In October the Justice Department sued Google for abusing its dominance in online search and advertising _ the government's most significant attempt to protect competition since its groundbreaking case against Microsoft more than 20 years ago.


And last week U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta set a tentative trial date of Sept. 12, 2023 for the landmark case.

Google has fiercely denied government allegations that it has illegally struck a series of deals to thwart competition in the search market to help give it a stranglehold on a digital advertising market that has brought in more than $100 billion in revenue to the company during the first nine months of this year alone.

The company's insistence that it has done nothing wrong makes a pre-trial settlement seem unlikely.