Illustration: The Verge
The government’s antitrust case against Google just got significantly smaller. In a filing on Friday, a US district court judge dismissed several of the claims that the Department of Justice and a coalition of states brought against the company, including allegations that Google Search harms competing services.
The decision stems from a pair of lawsuits that the DOJ and a group of 38 state attorneys general filed against Google in 2020. While the DOJ and states originally filed separately, the suit has since become mostly consolidated. The suit accuses Google of anti-competitive behavior on a number of fronts, including designing its search engine to disadvantage competitors like Yelp, Expedia, and Tripadvisor.
However, Judge Amit Mehta…