US considers Google break-up in landmark antitrust case

Source: Financial Times

The US government is considering seeking the break-up of Google to end its monopoly in search, in what would be the boldest effort yet to rein in one of the world’s most powerful tech companies. The potential remedy was set out by the Department of Justice on Tuesday and comes after federal prosecutors won a landmark case in August, when a judge ruled Google had violated US antitrust law and branded the company a “monopolist”.

The DoJ could also seek to force Google to share users’ search data with rivals and restrict its ability to use search results to train new generative artificial intelligence models and products. A break-up of Google would reorder a search market in which the company handles more than 90 per cent of online queries and would transform a business that has made its parent company, Alphabet, one of the most valuable in the world.

“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little-to-no incentive to compete for users,” the DoJ said. “Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.”

In addition to potential spin-offs, prosecutors said remedies could include banning the exclusive contracts at the heart of the case — in particular the $20bn that Google pays annually to Apple to be the default Safari search engine — as well as imposing “non-discrimination” measures on Google products such as its Android operating system and Play app store.

The DoJ also recognised the disruptive impact that AI would have on online search. Prosecutors are concerned that Google will “leverage its monopoly power” to feed its AI features and want websites to be able to opt out of being used to train Google’s AI models or inclusion in its AI-generated summaries.

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