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The US government is considering asking a district judge to disband Google for antitrust violations in online search, which would mark the boldest effort by federal prosecutors to rein in one of the world’s biggest competitors. the most powerful technology company in the world.
The US Department of Justice is “considering structural and behavioral remedies that could prevent Google from using products such as [the] Chrome [browser]Play [app store] and Android [operating system]” to give its search engine an advantage over competitors or new entrants, according to court documents filed Tuesday.
Prosecutors can also seek coercion Google to share user search data with competitors and limit the ability to use search results to train new artificial general intelligence products and models.
“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving competitors with little incentive to compete for users,” the DoJ said. “Completely redressing these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control distribution tomorrow.”
The DoJ has identified four areas that its remedies framework should address: search distribution and revenue sharing; generate and display search results; advertising and monetization scale; and data collection and use.
Google hit back at the proposals, calling them “radical and far-reaching,” going beyond the legal issues in the case and a threat to “consumers, businesses and competitiveness.” American paintings”.
Shares of parent company Alphabet were little changed in after-hours trading and have risen 19% this year, giving the company a market value of $2 trillion, the fourth-largest for a publicly listed company. world.
The DoJ’s 32-page filing is an initial proposed remedy and is subject to change. It comes after Amit Mehta, the judge presiding over the case, in August labeling Google a “monopolist” when he ruled that the company had spent tens of billions of dollars on exclusive agreements to maintain its illegal dominance in search.
Tuesday’s filing advances the second phase of the trial, in which Mehta will determine the remedies that will be available to Google.
The DoJ and Google are expected to release their final rulings and proposed witness lists on November 20 and December 20, respectively. Mehta has held hearings for the requests requested a fix in April and said he planned to issue a decision by August 2025. Google announced it would appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court, which could take many more years.
In addition to potential side effects, prosecutors said remedies could include banning the exclusive contracts at the heart of the case — especially 20 billion USD Google pays Apple every year becoming its default search engine – as well as applying “non-discrimination” measures against Google products such as the Android operating system and the Play app store.
The DoJ is also considering asking Google to share its vast trove of data collected to improve its search ranking advertising models, metrics and algorithms, which prosecutors say was illegally accumulated. .
To address any data privacy concerns that result, Google may “prohibit[ed] from using or storing data that cannot be effectively shared with others”.
DoJ also recognizes the disruptive impact AI will have on online search. Prosecutors are concerned that Google will “leverage its monopoly power” to offer its AI features and want websites to be able to opt out of training Google’s AI models or into AI-generated summaries.
Ultimately, the filing says Google’s dominance of search text ads needs to be addressed by either lowering barriers to potential competitors or licensing its ad feeds. to others, independent of search results.
Google’s lawsuit could be the biggest antitrust victory for the DoJ since a judge ordered Microsoft broken up 24 years ago for illegally suppressing competition.
However, that ruling was overturned on appeal a year later, making Google’s case a second opportunity for the DoJ to fundamentally dismantle the dominance of a Big Tech company in an important sector .
The results of testing the remedy will be an important test for Jonathan Kanterwho inherited the case and has instituted a tougher enforcement policy over the past three years as head of the DoJ’s antitrust unit.
Kanter has sued Apple and is pursuing a second lawsuit against Google’s advertising technology business. Big Tech critic Lina Khan, chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, has challenged Amazon and Meta in separate cases.
This lawsuit comes on the heels of other legal failures by Alphabet. A California judge on Monday ordered the company to open the Android operating system to competitors, allowing them to create their own app marketplaces and payment systems to compete with Google Play. Google said it will appeal the verdict.
That ruling was the result of a lawsuit from Epic, the popular video game maker Fortressargued that Google suppressed competition in Android apps and used its monopoly to charge too much.
