Alexandria, Apr 17 (AP) Google has been branded an abusive monopolist by a federal judge for the second time in less than a year, this time for illegally exploiting some of its online marketing technology to boost the profits fuelling an internet empire currently worth USD 1.8 trillion.

The ruling issued Thursday by US District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia comes on the heels of a separate decision in August that concluded Google’s namesake search engine has been illegally leveraging its dominance to stifle competition and innovation.

After the US Justice Department targeted Google’s ubiquitous search engine during President Donald Trump’s first administration, the same agency went after the company’s lucrative digital advertising network in 2023 during President Joe Biden’s ensuing administration in an attempt to undercut the power that Google has amassed since its inception in a Silicon Valley garage in 1998.

Although antitrust regulators prevailed both times, the battle is likely to continue for several more years as Google tries to overturn the two monopoly decisions in appeals while forging ahead in the new and highly lucrative technological frontier of artificial intelligence.

The next step in the latest case is a penalty phase that will likely begin late this year or early next year. The same so-called “remedy” hearings in the search monopoly case are scheduled to begin Monday in Washington DC, where Justice Department lawyers will try to convince US District Judge Amit Mehta to impose a sweeping punishment that includes a proposed requirement for Google to sell its Chrome web browser. (AP) GSP