The U.S. Justice Department could ask a federal court to break up Google LLC, officials disclosed in a filing today.
Reports that such a move is on the table have been swirling for weeks. In early August, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Google maintains an illegal monopoly across the search engine and search advertising markets. To remedy the situation, the Justice Department will ask the court to change Google’s business practices. The department this morning submitted a 32-page filing that previews some of the changes it could request.
According to the document, officials may seek to block Google from using products such as Chrome and Android to give its search engine an edge over rivals. To that end, the Justice Department may request “behavioral and structural remedies.” Structural remedies are court orders that break up a company by spinning off business units.
According to today’s filing, some of the other antitrust actions under consideration focus on Google’s default service agreements. Those agreements were at the center of the August court ruling that found the company had engaged in monopolistic practices.
In recent years, Google has paid companies such as Apple Inc. tens of billions of dollars to make its search engine the default option on their devices and browsers. The August court ruling found that those deals gave the Alphabet Inc. unit an unfair edge over rivals. At the same time, the court determined that Google Search’s competitive feature set likewise contributed to its strong market position.
The remedies that the Justice Department is considering also cover other aspects of the company’s business. Notably, some of the changes previewed in today’s filing focus on Google’s lucrative search advertising services.
The Justice Department may ask the court to order that Google share its ad feed with competitors. Additionally, officials could request changes that would give advertisers more information about how the Alphabet unit processes their ad purchases.
The antitrust actions that the Justice Department is weighing span several other areas as well. One of the remedies would give website operators more ways to opt out of Google’s artificial intelligence products. Furthermore, the Justice Department may require the company to share the data it uses to power its search results with rivals through an application programming interface.
Officials plan to draft a more complete list of proposed remedies next month. Next April, the judge presiding over the case will hold a hearing to determine which of those remedies should be implemented. A ruling is expected by next August.
Google has pushed back against the Justice Department’s filing. “We are concerned the DOJ is already signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post. “This case is about a set of search distribution contracts. Rather than focus on that, the government seems to be pursuing a sweeping agenda that will impact numerous industries and products.”
Regulators in the European Union have also floated the idea of breaking up Google. However, a recent report suggests that the EU will most likely opt for a different route because of the complexity that would be involved in such a move. It’s believed that EU officials will order Google to end business practices deemed to be anticompetitive without requiring the company to spin off business units.