U.S. considers asking court to break up Google as it weighs remedies in the antitrust case

A Google sign hangs over an entrance to the company's new building, Sept. 6, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

The U.S. Department of Justice is considering asking a federal judge to force Google to sell parts of its business in order to eliminate its online search monopoly.

In a late court filing on Tuesday, federal prosecutors also said the judge could ask the court to open the underlying data Google uses to power its ubiquitous search engine and artificial intelligence products to competitors.

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Tuesday’s filing is the first step in a monthslong legal process to come up with remedies that could reshape a company that’s long been synonymous with online search.

“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 antitrust enforcers wrote in the filing. “Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.”

To that end, the department said it is considering asking for structural changes to stop Google from leveraging products such as its Chrome browser, Android operating system, AI products or app store to benefit its search business.

Prosecutors also zeroed in on Google's default search agreements in the filing and said any remedy proposals would seek to limit or ban these deals. These deals lock in Google services and products as the automatic choice presented to consumers, such as when Safari browsers on Apple iPhones use Google's search engine.

Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in response to the filing that the Department of Justice was “already signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues" in this case. “Government overreach in a fast-moving industry may have negative unintended consequences for American innovation and America’s consumers.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August that Google's search engine has been illegally exploiting its dominance to squash competition and stifle innovation. He has outlined a timeline for a trial on the proposed remedies next spring and plans to issue a decision by August 2025.

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Google has already said it plans to appeal Mehta’s ruling, but the tech giant must wait until he finalizes a remedy before doing so. The appeals process could take as long as five years, predicts George Hay, a law professor at Cornell University who was the chief economist for the Justice Department’s antitrust division for most of the 1970s.

In November, federal prosecutors will submit a more detailed proposal on tackling Google’s anticompetitive practices. Google in turn will offer its own ideas for how to make fixes in December. Prosecutors will then make their final proposal in March 2025.

Google has been facing intensifying regulatory pressure on both sides of the Atlantic, with European Union antitrust enforcers also suggesting that breaking up the company is the only way to satisfy competition concerns about its digital ad business.