The US Department of Justice is considering using the courts to force the technology giant Google to sell parts of its business and thus end its monopoly on internet searches.
The United States Department of Justice is considering asking a federal judge to force Google to sell parts of its business to end its monopoly on Internet searches.
In a legal document filed late Tuesday, federal prosecutors also said the judge could ask the court to open up to competitors the data Google uses to operate its ubiquitous search engine and artificial intelligence products.
“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little or no incentive to compete with users,” antitrust officials said in the document. “Fully remedying those harms requires not only ending Google's control over distribution today, but ensuring that Google cannot control distribution tomorrow.”
To that end, the department said it was considering asking for structural changes to prevent Google from taking advantage of products such as its Chrome browser, the Android operating system, AI products or its app store to benefit its search business. In its filing, prosecutors also appear to focus on Google's default search agreements and noted that any proposal to resolve the situation would require limiting or prohibiting those agreements.
In response to the document, Google vice president of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said the Justice Department is “already targeting requests that go well beyond the specific legal issues” in this case. “Government overreach in a rapidly evolving industry could have unintended negative consequences for American innovation and American consumers.”
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta concluded in August that Google's search engine had illegally taken advantage of its dominant position to crush competition and stifle innovation. He has laid out a timetable for a trial on possible solutions next spring and plans to make a decision by August 2025.
Google has already said it plans to appeal Mehta's ruling, but the tech giant must wait until the judge completes a proposed settlement before doing so. The appeals process could take up to five years, said George Hay, a law professor at Cornell University who was chief economist in the Justice Department's antitrust division during most of the 1970s.