According to reports from the New York Times and Bloomberg News, the United States Department of Justice is considering options that include a potential break-up of the tech giant Google, valued at approximately USD 2 trillion, a week after a judge declared that the venture illegally monopolised the online search market.
One of the remedies that Justice Department attorneys most frequently discussed, according to the reports, was divesting the Android operating system. The reports also stated that officials were thinking about pressuring Google to sell its search advertisement programme “AdWords” and possibly divest its Chrome web browser.
According to a spokesman for the Justice Department, the DoJ was reviewing the court’s ruling and would determine the best course of action under the judge’s instructions and the relevant antitrust laws.
An official has stated that no decisions have been made yet. According to reports, Google plans to challenge the decision. The company is facing a second antitrust lawsuit from the US Department of Justice, which is scheduled to begin in September 2024.
The Justice Department is also mulling about other options including making it mandatory for Google to share data with rivals and putting in place safeguards to stop the tech giant from obtaining an unfair advantage in AI products.
It was discovered during the trial that Google paid businesses—including Apple—more than USD 26 billion in 2021 alone to continue to be the default search engine in Safari. The judge concluded that these agreements allowed Google to monopolise search and unfairly stifle rivals.
The FTC’s former chief technologist, Neil Chilson, called the discussion of Google’s potential dissolution “total wishcasting.”
“Nothing in Judge Mehta’s rather standard antitrust approach suggests a breakup is a plausible remedy. A breakup wouldn’t address the core conduct that the court found problematic: exclusive contracts for default placements,” he said, as reported by the Guardian.
DuckDuckGo, a rival search engine, suggested outlawing those exclusive agreements shortly after the judge’s decision.
As the world’s default search engine, Google spent billions of dollars to establish an illegal monopoly and violate antitrust laws, according to the verdict, which is now seen as the Joe Biden government’s first significant victory in challenging big tech’s dominance of the market.