The second round of the pivotal antitrust lawsuit against Google has begun. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said that “Google can use artificial intelligence (AI) to further expand its dominance in the search market,” and also revealed that Google has been paying Samsung Electronics a huge amount of money every month in exchange for embedding its AI model in Galaxy smartphones and other Samsung devices.

During the opening session of the trial held on April 21 (local time) in federal court in Washington, D.C., the DOJ said that Google has been making “enormous” monthly payments to Samsung to install its AI model, Gemini, as the default assistant on the company’s devices. The DOJ argued that this reflects a “classic monopolist playbook.”

The DOJ further noted that Google's contracts related to Gemini are “strikingly similar to previous deals that the court had already deemed illegal.”

In the first trial of the search engine antitrust case, which Google lost last August, the court found that Google's annual huge payments to Samsung and Apple to remain the default search engine on smartphones was an abuse of market power.

It was disclosed during the trial that Google had paid $20 billion and $6 billion to Apple and Samsung, respectively, in 2022 alone.

Google acknowledged the DOJ’s claims.

Peter FitzGerald, Google’s Vice President of Platform and Device Partnerships, testified that the company “agreed in January this year to pay Samsung for the integration of Gemini into its devices.” He added that “the agreement will last for at least two years, with the option to extend through 2028.”

FitzGerald also explained that “under the agreement, Google provides a fixed monthly payment to Samsung and shares part of the advertising revenue generated within the Gemini app with the company.”

Samsung has been using Gemini as the default AI engine since the launch of Galaxy S24 series smartphones. However, the exact amount of money Google is paying remains undisclosed.

Google dismissed the DOJ’s claim that it is using AI to monopolize the search market, arguing that “Gemini is not the subject of the antitrust lawsuit and that Google does not hold a monopoly in AI products.”

Google’s payment practices have already come under scrutiny multiple times. In addition to the previously lost antitrust case, it was also a key issue in a lawsuit in 2023 filed by game developer Epic Games, which accused Google of anti-competitive behavior over its in-app billing system. The case revealed that Google had secretly shared revenue with Samsung to suppress competing app stores, paying the company $8 billion over four years.

Now facing multiple antitrust lawsuits and even the possibility of a corporate breakup, Google is under increasing pressure. During the trial that began on that day, the DOJ proposed that Google be forced to sell its Chrome browser as a remedy for its unlawful dominance in the search engine market. Earlier on April 17, a court had ruled that Google had also illegally monopolized certain online advertising technologies.

Samsung declined to comment on the allegations that it was being paid by Google to use Gemini.