The United States announced on Tuesday that it may petition a judge to compel Alphabet’s Google to sell off portions of the company, including the Android operating system and Chrome browser, which it claims are used to uphold an illegal monopoly in internet search.
In August, a judge determined in a historic case that Google, handling 90% of US internet searches, had established an unlicensed monopoly. The suggested remedies by the Justice Department might change the way Americans access the internet for information while reducing Google’s earnings and providing opportunity for its rivals to expand.
“Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow,” the Justice Department said.
Prosecutors claimed that one of the goals of the suggested solutions is to prevent Google’s historical hegemony from spreading to the emerging field of artificial intelligence.
It is also possible that the Justice Department will urge the court to stop Google from paying for its search engine to be pre-installed or default on new devices.
In order to maintain its dominant market position, Google has been paying firms like Apple and other device manufacturers on a yearly basis ($26.3 billion in 2021) to guarantee that its search engine is the default one on smartphones and browsers.
Google, which plans to appeal, said in a corporate blog post that the proposals were “radical” and said they “go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.” Google argues that the quality of its search engine has won over people, but it also notes that users have the option to switch to other search engines as their default and that it faces fierce competition from Amazon and other websites.
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