Verizon Wireless beat out Google Inc. to win the biggest block of airwaves in an American government auction, spending $4.74 billion and agreeing to rules that will open its network to an unprecedented degree.

Verizon cast the winning bid for a 49-state spectrum swath called the C-block, the chairman of the commission Federal Communications, Kevin Martin, said yesterday. Verizon must let any legal device or program run on the airwaves, breaking a phone-company tradition of limiting the products they support.

The auction of 1,099 licenses ran for almost two months and raised $19.6 billion, making it the most lucrative American airwaves sale in history. More than 80% of the proceeds came from AT&T Inc. and Verizon, the two biggest American wireless carriers. Revenue from the auction, which was subject to anonymous bidding rules, exceeded most analysts’ projections and topped the government’s estimate of as much as $15 billion.

“This keeps the number of national competitors to a minimum and will help allow Verizon to keep its customer loyalty rate high,” an equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s in new York, Todd Rosenbluth, said in an interview. Verizon kept the spectrum “out of the hands of anybody else.” Verizon spent $9.36 billion for 109 licenses, including 25 in a segment of airwaves called the A-block.