‘Remedying These Harms’: Federal Government Weighs Breakup Of $2 Trillion Tech Giant

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is considering recommending a federal judge to force Google to sell parts of its business in a bid to eliminate its alleged monopoly on online search, according to a court filing Tuesday.

A U.S. judge ruled in August that Google built and abused a “monopoly” by spending billions on exclusivity agreements to be the automatic search engine for browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. The DOJ could force Google to sell segments of its business, including its Chrome browser and Android operating system, which place Google as its default search engine, the DOJ filing showed.

“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little-to-no incentive to compete for users,” the DOJ wrote. “Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.”

DOJ CONSIDERS BREAKING UP GOOGLE AS PART OF ANTITRUST REMEDY

The Justice Department revealed that it may seek a breakup of Alphabet (GOOGL), Google’s parent company, as an antitrust remedy.

This follows an earlier ruling that Google maintained an illegal monopoly in… pic.twitter.com/EF65BQLqzF

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) October 9, 2024

Google processed roughly 87% of U.S. internet searches in March 2024, while its closest competitor, Bing, accounted for just about 8%. The company spent $26.3 billion in 2021 alone to be the default engine on a slew of smartphones and browsers, a practice the DOJ might recommend the court force them to stop, according to Reuters.

Google described the DOJ proposals as “radical” and dangerous to “consumers, businesses and developers” alike, according to a company blog post published Wednesday.

“The government seems to be pursuing a sweeping agenda that will impact numerous industries and products, with significant unintended consequences for consumers, businesses, and American competitiveness,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in the post.

Google alleged the potential DOJ recommendations would force the company to share private user data with competitors without strong security practices that keep the information away from bad actors, the blog post stated. It also claimed the DOJ initiative would hamper Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) development at a time when AI is becoming increasingly crucial for the U.S. to maintain global technological and economic dominance.

“We believe that today’s blueprint goes well beyond the legal scope of the Court’s decision about Search distribution contracts,” Mulholland wrote. “Government overreach in a fast-moving industry may have negative unintended consequences for American innovation and America’s consumers. We look forward to making our arguments in court.”

The DOJ did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A Google spokesperson referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to the company’s blog post discussing the DOJ filing.