Few companies are as popular a target for anti-trust lawsuits as Google but at least the company can relax a bit in the United States after a federal judge dismissed one of the more recent anti-trust lawsuits against Google. The lawsuit claimed that the company harmed smartphone users by forcing the companies making the devices to use Google as Android’s default operating system.
A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit accusing Google Inc of harming smartphone buyers by forcing handset makers that use its Android operating system to make the search engine company’s own applications the default option. Consumers claimed that Google required companies such as Samsung Electronics Co to favor Google apps such as YouTube on Android-powered phones, and restrict rival apps such as Microsoft Corp’s Bing. They said this illegally drove smartphone prices higher because rivals could not compete for the “prime screen real estate” that Google’s apps enjoyed. But in Friday’s decision, U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in San Jose, California said the consumers failed to show that higher prices stemmed from Google’s having illegally forced restrictive contracts on the handset makers.