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In what could be a ground-breaking victory for the Justice Departments, a federal judge ruled Monday that Google’s payments to make its search engine the default on smartphone web browsers violates US antitrust law.

As Bloomberg reports, Judge Amit Mehta in Washington said that the Alphabet Inc. unit’s $26 billion in payments effectively blocked any other competitor from succeeding in the market

The Justice Department and states had sued Google, accusing it of illegally cementing its dominance, in part, by paying other companies, like Apple and Samsung, billions of dollars a year to have Google automatically handle search queries on their smartphones and web browsers.

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Judge Mehta said in his ruling.

“The importance and significance of this case is not lost on me, not only for Google but for the public,” he added.

Having recovered some of the losses overnight, this new DoJ headline has smacked GOOGL shares back down near the lows of the day (down around 6%)…

The case is the first antitrust trial pitting the federal government against a US technology company in more than two decades.

Today’s ruling is likely to influence other government antitrust lawsuits against Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Not exactly the news that dip-buyers were hoping to hear.