Having already ruled that Google operates its search engine as an illegal monopoly, a federal judge on Friday said he intends to decide by next summer on the consequences, which could include the breakup of one of America’s largest companies.
In the initial phase of the Justice Department’s monopoly trial against Google’s search business — the first such case against a major tech company in decades — Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled last month that the Alphabet unit violated antitrust law through business practices spanning more than a decade that helped ensure its search engine remained No. 1.
The second phase will determine what so-called remedies Mehta deems sufficient to restore competition to the online search engine market, ranging from targeted actions to breaking up Google.
At a status conference Friday afternoon, Mehta said he would hold an evidentiary hearing in March or April next year and issue his opinion by early August. He asked the Justice Department to share its proposed remedies with Google as soon as possible in the coming months, so both sides could begin discovery.
David Dahlquist, an acting deputy director in the Justice Department antitrust division, told Mehta that prosecutors planned to meet with industry stakeholders to gather opinions before drafting their proposal.
“We want to get their thoughts on how to restore competition,” he said.
John Schmidtlein, Google’s lead litigator, expressed concern after Dahlquist said the Justice Department was interested in potential remedies that may affect Google’s emerging AI business, which it has begun to integrate into its search engine. Prosecutors are hoping to prevent Google from leveraging its search monopoly to unfairly dominate the next generation of technologies, such as artificial intelligence.
“We need to know what the actual proposal is as soon as possible,” Schmidtlein said. “The devil really is in the details here.”
The case, U.S. et al v. Google, was filed by the Trump administration’s Justice Department in 2020 and taken to court last year under the Biden administration. It was the first of two Justice Department monopoly cases against Google; the second one, which centers on the company’s online advertising business, goes to trial on Monday in federal court in Virginia.
In the search case, prosecutors accused Google of illegally using payments to device makers to ensure that iPhones and almost all other smartphones sold in the United States came pre-installed with Google search as the default. These contracts helped Google’s search engine maintain its 90 percent market share, allowing Google to funnel business to its own advertising platform and other services.
Mehta ruled on Aug. 5 that Google violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, in what U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland declared a “historic win for the American people.” Google said its search engine has succeeded because it’s the best one available and that it would appeal.
The Justice Department has yet to say what remedies it will seek in the case. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who has been leading a group of states that joined the Justice Department lawsuit, said in an interview last month that his team is looking into breaking up Google, along with other options, such as a potential ban on the company paying phone makers to pre-install Google search.
Weiser said the goal of the state attorneys general would be to agree on a united stance with federal prosecutors on remedies, though they could submit separate proposals.
The timeline of the trial pushes a final decision until after the election, adding the complexity of a possible new presidential administration. In the last similar case, the Justice Department dropped its effort to break up Microsoft in 2001, after George W. Bush, who had expressed concerns during the campaign about breaking up the company, became president.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump have not publicly commented on the prospect of a Google breakup.
The company is also facing a number of other antitrust challenges, including an investigation in the European Union and arecently filed lawsuit by online reviews company Yelp.