The Department of Justice wants to break up Google -- a move experts described as severe and not likely to be undertaken by the case judge.
In a court filing Wednesday, the DOJ said Google must divest its search browser, Chrome, and potentially Android if behavioral remedies fail to correct the company's anticompetitive conduct. The DOJ also wants to prohibit Google from owning or acquiring interest in rival search companies and any potential entrants to the market, according to the filing. Additionally, the DOJ proposed preventing Google from self-preferencing and entering into exclusionary agreements with third parties. The agency also wants to require Google to disclose data "critical to restoring competition" in the online search market.
District Court Judge Amit Mehta, who issued the verdict in August that Google is a monopoly, will oversee the proposed remedies in the case. Despite Mehta's verdict, courts in antitrust cases rarely opt to break up monopolies, said Erik Hovenkamp, an antitrust law professor at Cornell Law School, in a statement provided to TechTarget Editorial. If a court finds a less intrusive way to curb a company's anticompetitive conduct, "then it is going to opt for that simpler remedy," he said.
"Most judges really do not want to break up a large company like Google that generates a lot of popular and valuable products," Hovenkamp said. "They would much rather take a more surgical approach that excises the bad conduct while leaving the company itself intact."
Most judges really do not want to break up a large company like Google that generates a lot of popular and valuable products.
Erik Hovenkamp Antitrust law professor, Cornell Law School
In a statement responding to the DOJ's proposed remedies, Kent Walker, Google's president of global affairs and chief legal officer, said the DOJ is pushing a "radical interventionist agenda" that would harm the U.S.'s global technology leadership.
"DOJ's wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the court's decision," Walker said in the statement. "It would break a range of Google products, even beyond search, that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives."
DOJ's proposed Google breakup seen as extreme
The DOJ's proposed remedies are "very, very aggressive," Hovenkamp said.
"They want Google to divest Chrome, which would already be a very substantial intervention by modern antitrust standards," he said.
However, the government wants remedies beyond the Chrome divestiture, including the option to force Google to divest Android, share user and advertiser data, and follow other behavioral restrictions. Hovenkamp said this includes "banning Google from using its search engine to give preferential access to other popular Google products, such as YouTube."
"I think it's pretty unlikely that the government will be successful in getting these things," Hovenkamp said. "In particular, I do not expect the court to order any divestiture."
He added that the Google monopoly case is ultimately about anticompetitive contracts. The simplest remedy, he said, would be to issue an injunction terminating such deals and preventing Google from entering into similar agreements in the future.
The DOJ's proposal lacks analysis on the effects remedies such as a Chrome divestiture would have on "all parts of the online ecosystem," said Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonprofit public policy think tank.
"It seems like they're trying to break the company instead of actually trying to create some kind of meaningful change that addresses the structural issue that they're concerned about in terms of competition," he said.
Castro said he's particularly concerned that the DOJ's proposals include artificial intelligence. The filing stated Google would be prevented from acquiring new online search companies that use the technology for queries, which he said would place limits on the company that don't exist for others and hamstring its ability to compete.
President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration could also influence the federal government's efforts to seek remedies against Google. Google plans to file its own remedy proposals in December, and the case will continue to unfold into 2025.
"Though the forced sale of Chrome would be a dramatic turn of events for Google, the incoming administration is likely going to upend many of the DOJ's current plans, perhaps including its prosecutorial strategy in this case," said Damian Rollison, director of market insights at marketing platform SOCi, in a statement.
If the DOJ prevails in court, however, it will mark a significant blow to Google's market dominance and become a "possible harbinger of bad news for multiple large tech firms who are also in the government's crosshairs."
Makenzie Holland is a senior news writer covering big tech and federal regulation. Prior to joining TechTarget Editorial, she was a general assignment reporter for the Wilmington StarNews and a crime and education reporter at the Wabash Plain Dealer.
