The United States on Tuesday could ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell parts of its business, including its Chrome browser and Android operating system, saying they are being used to maintain an illegal monopoly on online search. It was announced that there is.
In a landmark case, a judge found in August that Google, which processes 90% of U.S. internet searches, had created an illegal monopoly. The Justice Department’s proposed relief could change the way Americans find information on the Internet, while shrinking the company’s profits and giving competitors room to grow.
“To fully redress these damages, we need to not only end Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensure that Google no longer controls distribution tomorrow,” the Justice Department said.
Prosecutors say the amendments are also aimed at ensuring that Google’s past dominance extends to its fast-growing artificial intelligence business.
stop payment
The Justice Department could also ask a court to stop paying Google to preinstall its search engine or set it as the default on new devices.
Google pays companies including Apple and other device makers a year ($26.3 billion in 2021) to ensure its search engine remains the default on smartphones and browsers and maintains high market share. I’m going.
Google, which plans to appeal, said in a post on its company blog that the proposal is “radical” and “goes far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”
Google says quality wins
Google claims its search engine wins users for its quality, adding that it faces stiff competition from Amazon and other sites and users can choose other search engines as their default. .
Alphabet, the world’s fourth-largest company with a market capitalization of more than $2 trillion, is facing increasing legal pressure from competitors and antitrust authorities.
A U.S. judge ruled Monday in a separate case that search engine companies must open up their lucrative Play app store to more competition, including by making Android apps available from rival sources. was lowered. Google is also fighting a Justice Department lawsuit seeking to break up its web advertising business.
Blocking dominance in AI
The Justice Department has said that as part of efforts to prevent Google from extending its dominance over AI, it may seek to provide its competitors with the indexes, data and models used in Google Search and its AI-assisted search capabilities. Ta.
Other orders sought by prosecutors include restricting Google from entering into agreements that restrict access to the web content of other AI competitors and restricting Google from allowing websites to use its own content to train AI models. This includes allowing you to opt out of.
Google said AI-related proposals could suffocate the field.
“There are huge risks for governments to scale this important industry, distorting investment, distorting incentives and discouraging new business models, but at a time when we need to encourage investment. ” said Google.
The Justice Department plans to submit a more detailed proposal to the court by Nov. 20, and the company will have an opportunity to propose its own remedies by Dec. 20.
Lawsuit against big tech
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling in Washington was a major victory for antitrust enforcement officials, who have filed a series of ambitious lawsuits against Big Tech companies over the past four years.
The United States is also suing Metaplatforms, Amazon.com, and Apple, alleging that they illegally maintain monopolies.
Some of the ideas in the Justice Department’s proposal to break up Google had previously attracted support from smaller competitors, including review site Yelp and rival search engine company DuckDuckGo.
Yelp, which sued Google over search in August, says spinoffs of its Chrome browser and AI services should be considered. Yelp also wants to prohibit Google from prioritizing local business pages in search results.
(Information provided by Reuters)
