A week after a judge ruled that Alphabet’s Google illegally monopolized the online search market, the US Department of Justice is considering options that include breaking up the tech giant, worth some $2tn, according to reports from the New York Times and Bloomberg News.
Divesting the Android operating system was one of the remedies most frequently discussed by justice department attorneys, the reports said.
Officials were also considering trying to force a possible sale of AdWords, Google’s search ad program, and a possible divestment of its Chrome web browser, according to the reports.
A justice department spokesperson said it was evaluating the court’s decision and would assess the appropriate next steps consistent with the court’s direction and the applicable legal framework for antitrust remedies.
The spokesperson said no decisions had yet been made. A Google spokesperson declined to comment. Google is planning to appeal the ruling. It faces another antitrust suit by the US justice department set to go to trial next month.
The justice department’s other options include forcing Google to share data with competitors and instating measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, the reports said, citing people familiar with the matter.
During the trial, it was revealed that Google paid companies, including Apple, more than $26bn in 2021 alone to remain the default option for search in Safari. Those deals allowed Google to build a monopoly over search and unfairly suppress competition, the judge found.
Neil Chilson, former chief technologist for the FTC, said talk of breaking up Google was “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.
Shortly after the judge made his ruling, the competing search engine DuckDuckGo proposed banning those exclusive agreements.
The verdict, delivered last week, held that Google violated antitrust law, spending billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly and become the world’s default search engine. The ruling is seen as the first big win for federal authorities taking on the market dominance of big tech.
Federal antitrust regulators have sued Meta Platforms, Amazon.com and Apple in the past four years, claiming the companies illegally maintained monopolies.
Microsoft had settled with the justice department in 2004 on claims it forced its Internet Explorer web browser on Windows users.
Alden Abbott, former general counsel for the FTC, said the divestiture of Google’s various businesses would be “disastrous”, but said it would be unlikely.
“The court of appeals in US v Microsoft (2001) flatly rejected breaking up that company, even though its illegal monopolizing conduct was not found by the court to create beneficial efficiencies. Breaking up Google probably will not be ordered. That is fortunate. A Google breakup would be one of the most economically destructive acts in the annals of American antitrust,” he said.
