DOJ proposes a Google break-up in looming search engine remedy trial

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Justice Department suggested in a proposal Tuesday night that a federal judge could order Google to divest key parts of its business, such as Google Chrome and the Android operating system, to remedy its illegal monopoly.

The proposal comes just over two months after U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google operated an illegal monopoly in the search engine market — in which Google dominates 90% of all internet searches — after a nine-week trial in 2023.

Mehta’s ruling concluded the first half of the landmark antitrust case and set up a second trial in Washington, where the Barack Obama appointee will consider potential remedies to make the relevant markets, which Google had near-complete control over, competitive again.

Breaking up Google is one option — and would follow other landmark antitrust decisions, such as in Standard Oil’s case in 1911 — but Mehta could also order hefty fines, or merely enjoin Google from engaging in monopolistic behavior.

In its proposal, the Justice Department argued that a breakup was both faithful to Mehta’s ruling and necessary to prevent Google from using its varied products like Chrome, Android and the Google Play store, to advantage search over rivals or new competitors. The breakup was the first of four methods Mehta could take to eliminate Google’s monopoly power.

“As the court recognized, Google’s longstanding control of the Chrome browser, with its preinstalled Google search default, ‘significantly narrows the available channels of distribution and thus disincentivizes the emergence of new competition,’” the Justice Department said.

Mehta’s ruling and the lengthy trial centered on Google’s default agreements with companies like Apple and Mozilla to make Google the default search engine on the iPhone, Safari browser and Firefox browser, for which Google shelled out billions of dollars. Specifically, Google paid Apple $26.3 billion in 2021 for exclusive default status.

A coalition of 35 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico joined the Justice Department in the antitrust suit, and suggested in Tuesday’s filing that Google support an educational-awareness campaign that would “enhance the ability of users to choose the general search engine that suits them best.”

Such campaigns would likely follow examples set by other countries, like the European Union and Russia, which implemented “choice screens” that appear the first time a user opens a browser and are then prompted to select a search engine.

At trial, evidence showed that part of Google’s dominance in the search engine market was due to its massive amount of user data, creating a sort of snowball effect: Google’s searches became more accurate as it collected more data, then garnered more searches as accuracy improved, and so on.

Mehta noted in his ruling that Google valued such data so much, it would store 18 months’ worth of a user’s search history and activity by default.

The Justice Department suggest that, in order to offset Google’s data advantage, Mehta should order Google share the data, indexes, feeds and models used for Google search, including its AI search feature and underlying search “ranking signals” that order a query’s results.

Acknowledging privacy concerns over sharing that data, the Justice Department added that Mehta could prohibit Google from using or retaining data that could not be shared with other companies over privacy concerns.

While the antitrust case was originally filed in 2020 under the Trump administration and focused on conduct prior to the 2023 trial, the Justice Department also took aim at Google’s new AI-search features. The feature is intended to generate a search in response to a more open-ended query, and pulls from several third-party websites, which the Justice Department argued have “little-to-no bargaining power” and cannot risk exclusion from Google.

“Google’s ability to leverage its monopoly power to feed artificial intelligence features in an emerging barrier to competition and risks further entrenching Google’s dominance,” the Justice Department said, suggesting Mehta “level the playing field” by allowing websites to opt out of training or appearing in Google’s AI.

When Google made the feature public in May, users widely criticized it, as they reported erroneous answers that were either unhelpful, comedic or dangerous. Widely publicized results included suggestions to add glue to a cheese pizza recipe and that pregnant women could smoke 2-3 cigarettes a day.

The Justice Department’s fourth remedy centered on Google’s search text advertising, despite Mehta’s ruling that Google did not hold a monopoly in that market. Suggested remedies include addressing Google’s use of scale, licensing or syndicating Google’s ad feed, providing transparent information to advertisers and allowing advertisers to stay out of certain Google search features.

In a blog post responding to the proposed remedies, Lee-Ann Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, called the suggestions “radical changes,” and expressed concern that the Justice Department was going “far beyond” the legal issues in the case.

“This case is about a set of search distribution contracts,” Mulholland wrote. “Rather than focus on that, 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.”

Google has not yet filed an appeal of Mehta’s initial ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, leaving a looming but yet-unscheduled trial to determine potential remedies.

The Justice Department is set to file a more detailed remedy proposal by Nov. 20, with Google responding with its own suggestions by Dec. 20.

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