“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its [search] monopoly,” Judge Amit Mehta wrote in early August in a landmark ruling. The Department of Justice (DOJ) won the antitrust case against Google four years after bringing the case to court. However, the ruling against Google did not say what the search giant will have to do to stop being a monopolist.
We’ve speculated on the kind of Google Search deals that Google will have to stop making, such as the lucrative iPhone deal that’s worth more than $20 billion a year to Apple nowadays. That was just a guess, one that might still prove to be correct.
Two months after the original ruling, the DOJ filed an initial proposal on how to break Google’s monopoly apart and restore competition to online search. The DOJ updated its proposal late on Wednesday, over a month after that initial proposal.
Among the various penalties the DOJ has devised for Google, one stands out immediately. The DOJ wants Google to divest the Chrome web browser, which is easily one of Google’s key weapons for dominating online search. It’s also a very popular browser around the world, which is why the DOJ is going after it.
However, this is just a proposal, and the DOJ will ultimately have to wait for Judge Mehta to issue a final ruling.
Breaking Google apart is one way to reduce its anticompetitive behavior. As The Verge notes, it’s not just Chrome that the DOJ might be targeting. Android is another option, though the DOJ isn’t specifically calling for Google also to divest Android at this time.
I’ll remind you that Google’s only reason to buy Android and turn it into what it is today is Google Search. Google wanted to ensure it had a prominent placement for Google Search in the next computing era, where the smartphone would be the most important computer in everyone’s lives.
Everything Google does has Google Search at the core. The software and hardware products are there to enhance Google Search, but also solidify its placement in people’s lives.
Spinning out Android could be even worse for Google than selling Chrome. The DOJ wants Google to be aware that it might go after Android if the other solutions it proposes fail to restore competition in the online search business.
The DOJ has other proposals that could hurt Google’s Search business. The government wants Google to stop paying third parties like Apple for making Google Search the default search engine on phones. Google might also have to stop giving Search preferential treatment in other products it owns, like YouTube and Gemini.
Also, Google would have to offer rivals access to its search engine at “marginal cost, and on an ongoing basis.”
The DOJ is also targeting Google’s AI initiatives for Google Search. The government wants Google to allow websites to opt out of AI Overviews without being penalized in search results.
The antitrust verdict and the proposed remedies come at a critical time for Google. While the company is a front-runner in genAI, it’s not in the position it wanted to be. It’s OpenAI ChatGPT that the world looks at first for AI innovation, not Gemini. And OpenAI just launched a ChatGPT Search product that could give Google Search a run for the money in the near future.
That might be the kind of competition that reduces Google’s search monopoly. But the DOJ’s win means the government will impact the way Google runs Google Search even before it has to compete against the AI search options out there.
As you might expect, Google isn’t happy with what the DOJ is asking. The company had some harsh words for the government in a blog post, calling the proposals “extreme:”
DOJ chose to push a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership. DOJ’s wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court’s decision. It would break a range of Google products — even beyond Search — that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives.
Regarding the divestiture of Chrome and Android, Google had the DOJ sale proposal would “endanger the security and privacy of millions of Americans, and undermine the quality of products people love.”
Anyone who remembers how Google worked before Apple forced it to actually care about user privacy will know that the Google products people loved, Chrome and Android included, also endangered the privacy of millions of Americans.
Google will file its own proposals to address the verdict in the case next month. The DOJ will then file a revised version of its proposal in March. The two parties will go to court in April, and Judge Mehta will decide what Google must do to stop being a monopolist.