DOJ Reinforces Demand to Break Up Google’s Search Monopoly
In a court filing on Friday, the government signaled a continuation of tough regulatory pressure on the search giant.
In a court filing on Friday, the government signaled a continuation of tough regulatory pressure on the search giant.
In a sign that President Trump is following the Biden administration’s lead in reining in Google, the Justice Department on Friday reiterated its demand that a court break up the search giant.
The request followed a landmark ruling last year by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that found Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search by paying web browsers and smartphone manufacturers to feature its search engine. The judge is scheduled to hear arguments on proposed solutions from both the government and Google in April.
Under the Biden administration last year, the Justice Department and a group of states asked Judge Mehta in a preliminary filing to force Google to sell its popular web browser, Chrome, among other remedies. The department’s lawyers on Friday reiterated that demand, which could reshape internet competition.
“Google’s illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that — no matter what occurs — Google always wins,” the government said in its Friday filing. “The American people thus are forced to accept the unbridled demands and shifting, ideological preferences of an economic leviathan in return for a search engine the public may enjoy.”
Google, which says it intends to ultimately appeal the judge’s ruling in the case, also filed its own final proposal on Friday, maintaining its position that the company shouldn’t need to change much to address the judge’s concerns.
The Justice Department’s decision to stick with its sweeping proposal to fundamentally alter the $2 trillion company’s business is one of the first signals from the new administration on how it may approach tech regulation. The requests, the most significant remedies proposed in a tech monopoly case since the Justice Department asked to break up Microsoft in 2000, could presage how Mr. Trump’s appointees will handle a string of other antitrust cases that challenge the dominance of tech behemoths.
