The Department of Justice is reportedly about to file a lawsuit accusing Google of violating antitrust law.
The DOJ in a lawsuit that will be filed on Tuesday will accuse Google of "illegally maintaining its monopoly over search through several exclusive business contracts and agreements that lock out competition," The New York Times reports. The news was confirmed by several other outlets including Bloomberg, which described the lawsuit as the "most significant monopoly case to be filed in the U.S. in decades."
Google's parent company, Alphabet, had been a subject of an antitrust investigation that the Justice Department opened in 2019 examining its search and advertising practices, and last month, reports suggested charges were close to being announced. Tuesday's lawsuit, The Washington Post wrote, "marks the start, not the end," of the Justice Department's case against Google, as "it could take years for a federal court to resolve" it.
The Times previously reported that the DOJ during the course of its investigation had "amassed powerful evidence of anticompetitive practices" on the part of Google, but also that Attorney General William Barr was pushing a September deadline on DOJ officials and had "overruled career lawyers who said they needed more time to build a strong case."