Aug 5 (Reuters) - U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on

Monday ruled that Google had violated antitrust law by spending

billions of dollars to secure exclusive agreements with

developers, carriers and equipment makers to be the default

search engine.

Here are some key statements the judge made in his 277-page

ruling:

"Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain

its monopoly."

"Sure, users can access Google's rivals by switching the

default search access point or by downloading a rival search app

or browser. But the market reality is that users rarely do so."

"The default is extremely valuable real estate. Because many

users simply stick to searching with the default, Google

receives billions of queries every day through those access

points."

"Google, of course, recognizes that losing defaults would

dramatically impact its bottom line. For instance, Google has

projected that losing the Safari default would result in a

significant drop in queries and billions of dollars in lost

revenues."

"The distribution agreements have caused a third key

anticompetitive effect: They have reduced the incentive to

invest and innovate in search."

"There is no genuine 'competition for the contract.' Google

has no true competitor."

"Google has not achieved market dominance by happenstance.

It has hired thousands of highly skilled engineers, innovated

consistently, and made shrewd business decisions. The result is

the industry's highest quality search engine, which has earned

Google the trust of hundreds of millions of daily users."