“Largely as a result of Google’s exclusionary agreements and anticompetitive conduct, Google in recent years has accounted for nearly 90 percent of all general-search-engine queries in the United States, and almost 95 percent of queries on mobile devices,” the lawsuit says.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT FILES LONG-AWAITED ANTITRUST SUIT AGAINST GOOGLE 

The lawsuit has been in the works for over a year, and Big Tech executives from Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter have been anticipating an announcement — designing their testimonies in Congress to ward off a potential federal suit.

House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David N. Cicilline, D-R.I., described the lawsuit as “long overdue” and brought attention to prior investigations by the committee.

“The Subcommittee’s investigation uncovered extensive evidence showing that Google maintained and extended its monopoly to harm competition,” he said in a statement. “It is critical that the Justice Department’s lawsuit focuses on Google’s monopolization of search and search advertising, while also targeting the anti-competitive business practices Google is using to leverage this monopoly into other areas, such as maps, browsers, video, and voice assistants.”

The lawsuit alleges that Google used billions of dollars from advertisers to payphone manufacturers to ensure Google is the default search engine on browsers.

“For a general search engine, by far the most effective means of distribution is to be the preset default general search engine for mobile and computer search access points,” the lawsuit says. “Even where users can change the default, they rarely do. This leaves the preset default search engine with de facto exclusivity.”

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The Trump administration has long had Google in its sights. A top economic adviser to President Trump said two years ago that the White House was considering whether Google searches should be subject to government regulation.

Trump and other Republicans have accused Big Tech companies of having an anti-conservative bias — claims they have denied.

In a press conference, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said that the case had nothing to do with online bias, and was only about competitive conditions in the marketplace.

Fox News’ Gillian Turner, Jake Gibson and Bill Mears, as well as The Associated Press, contributed to this report.