Department of Justice Proposes Breaking Up Google Following Landmark Court Ruling

What Happened?

Following a ruling by a federal judge in Washington D.C., the U.S. Department of Justice has proposed that Google be required to divest its Chrome browser unit and open its search data to rivals. A previous court ruling found that Google has illegally held a monopoly in two market areas: search and text advertising. 

After the court ruling and the Justice Department’s proposal, Google issued a statement saying a breakup of the giant tech company would hurt the United States in its competition to gain AI supremacy against China.

Why it Matters

The ruling against Google is the most significant court decision against a big-tech company since the Microsoft ruling twenty years ago. ‘Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,’ Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court, for the District of Columbia, wrote in the decision. The court found that Google had violated section two of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which made monopolies illegal. 

Legal challenges to Google have been mounting steadily over the past several years. The Department of Justice and a group of attorneys general from 38 states and territories, led by Colorado and Nebraska, filed similar but separate antitrust suits against Google in 2020. Those cases were combined for pretrial purposes including discovery of evidence.

A blog post by Lee Ann Mulholland, Google’s Vice-President of Regulatory Affairs, laid out Google’s objections to the proposed break up. According to Ms. Mulholland, ‘the DOJ’s proposal would also hamstring how we develop AI…and would hold back American innovation at a critical juncture.’ The U.S. and China are in a race to become the world’s dominant artificial intelligence superpower, but it is unclear how a Google monopoly would be best for anyone other than Google.

Google has also claimed a breakup would harm consumers by limiting their choices and potentially exposing their private data to third parties without their consent. Interestingly none of those reasons provide any legal basis to challenge the court ruling that Google violated anti-trust laws. The main takeaway from Google’s response to the court ruling is that Google thinks it should be allowed to continue breaking the law because it thinks that’s good for consumers. 

The search remedies trial will determine the consequences of the guilty verdict. The three-week trial will end on May 9. Judge Amit Mehta is expected to make his ruling in August, at which point Google plans to file an appeal.

How it Affects You 

If Google is forced to sell Chrome, nearly three and a half billion people could find their browsing experience online affected. Following a Google/Chrome split, the default search engine in Chrome might change, and the browser could integrate with different search engines, potentially leading to a different search experience.