DOJ argues major Google breakup needed to prevent continued search monopoly

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Justice Department urged a federal judge to meet the “inescapable responsibility” to remedy Google’s two illegal monopolies over internet search and search adverting in a pre-trial brief Wednesday night.

The filing previews the government’s arguments for a looming remedy trial next month where U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta will decide how to make the internet search and search advertising markets competitive.

“Google foreclosed the competitive process, deprived rivals of the scale and revenue needed to compete, discouraged rival innovation and entry and charged text advertisers supra-competitive rates for lower quality products,” the Justice Department wrote. “The breadth, duration and severity of these harms demand a robust remedy.”

The remedy trial will begin first with a 15-day evidentiary hearing starting April 21, where Mehta, a Barack Obama appointee, will hear testimony from several high-profile witnesses, including Google CEO Sundar Pichai, ChatGPT head Nick Turley and Gemini General Manager Sissie Hsiao, among other top tech executives.

The Justice Department has proposed that Mehta could order the divestment of Chrome and Android or otherwise propose hefty fines, or merely enjoin Google from engaging in monopolistic behavior, such as its billion-dollar default agreements with Apple.

Such remedies would effectively prohibit any further monopolistic conduct from Google and are intended to reduce barriers to entry in both search markets, “thereby curbing Google’s monopoly power and denying Google the fruits of its statutory violations," the Justice Department said.

In its own pre-trial brief Monday, Google argued such remedies would be anticompetitive and harmful to consumers by forcing the use of “demonstrably inferior” search engines even when consumers “overwhelmingly prefer Google.”

Google has urged Mehta to “take caution” while crafting the remedy, suggesting that he could allow the tech company to continue paying for its default status on a year-to-year basis, while allowing companies like Apple to set a different default browser on different devices and receive bids from other companies.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department said such remedies fall “woefully short” of addressing the tech giant’s anticompetitive conduct.

“Google would permit unlawful payments to continue, permit new agreements similar to those that have harmed competition, ensure Google retains the fruits of its violations and leave open practices likely to result in future monopolization,” the Justice Department said.

Google’s “anemic” proposal is based on the erroneous theory that the multibillion-dollar agreements it shelled out to companies like Apple — one of its largest potential rivals in the search engine market — had no negative effects on competition," the Justice Department added.

The filing also previewed the testimony of several government witnesses — several of whom had their names redacted, raising potential public access concerns during the upcoming evidentiary hearing — whom the government expects will bolster the attainability and rationality of their proposed remedies.

Regarding the Chrome divestiture, the Justice Department said David Locala, its divestiture expert, will testify that Chrome could easily be sold, which would be accomplished through established corporate practices.

Professor James Mickens, the department added, will be able to explain how the movies technically feasible, as Chrome is a standalone product that could operate as a browser without connecting to Google cloud services.

According to the Justice Department, Mickens’ testimony should disprove one of Google’s witnesses, Professor Jason Nieh, who is expected to assert that the divestiture would take at least five years to remove Chrome’s dependencies on Google’s data services.

Mehta should also reject any assertion by Google that a divestiture would raise national security concerns, the government said.

“National security concerns are the purview of the executive branch of the United States, not a self-interested, publicly traded, private entity, such as Google,” the Justice Department said. “Indeed, just as the innovation that followed the breakup of AT&T demonstrated, competition will best secure the United States’ national security.”

Colorado, the lead plaintiff state that joined the Justice Department in the antitrust suit, recommended that Mehta should also order a public education campaign to resolve Google’s significant brand recognition, to the point that the company’s name has long been the colloquial verb for searching on the internet.

Such a campaign would inform users about changes in the marketplace, caused by this case, and recommend how users can choose the search engine that best fits their needs.

Additionally, the campaign could include short-term incentive payments for users to test and experience other search engines, although the Justice Department did not provide additional information on such payments.

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