Decreeing that search engine giant Google is a monopolist, the US Department of Justice has begun proposing solutions to correct the company’s illegal behaviour and restore competition to the market for search engines. Among the strictest proposals is to force Alphabet company to divest parts of its business, such as its Chrome browser and Android operating system to defang the tech giant. The verdict on remedies is planned to be delivered by August 2025.
In the landmark case against the tech giant, a judge found that the firm processes 90% of the internet searches in America and was throttling competition. The future course of this case will shape how Americans find information on the internet while shrinking Google’s revenues and giving its competitors more room to grow. The US Justice Department said that curbing the Alphabet-owned company not only means that control of distribution is tamed today, but also ensuring that it cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.
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Plaintiffs have suggested behavioural and structural remedies to prevent Google from favouring its own products like Chrome, Play, and Android over competitors or new market entrants. With stricter laws, it won’t be able to leverage its dominance in these areas to advantage its search engine and related products, including emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. The Justice Department might also ask the court to end Google’s payments to have its search engine pre-installed or set as the default on new devices.
The tech giant paid substantial annual fees, reaching $26.3 billion in 2021, to companies like Apple and other device manufacturers. This is to ensure that the search engine remains the default option on smartphones and browsers, maintaining its dominant market position.
In a separate case, a US judge recently ruled that Google must increase competition in its lucrative Play app store. This means it will need to allow Android apps to be distributed through rival sources.
The case against Google
The ongoing antitrust trial is the biggest antitrust trial of the century, which targeted its search business. Due to the tech firm’s unchecked and rising dominance in the search arena, two major antitrust lawsuits from the US government were slapped alleging the company has manipulated the market to maintain that dominance at the cost of competitors. The Alphabet-run firm has been under US DOJ scrutiny since October 2020.
The first lawsuit kicked off in mid-September 2023, and drew to a close in May 2024 with the delivery of closing arguments. The second trial against the tech giant, focused on advertising, began in September this year. The government presented its case and rested after about two weeks. The tech giant has been accused of engaging in monopolistic behaviour by strategically acquiring certain companies and controlling the adtech industry’s most widely-used tools and exchanges. This started with Google’s acquisition of advertising company DoubleClick in 2008.
Similar antitrust lawsuit was also filed against Microsoft at the turn of the century.
As the Justice Department mulls strict punishments, Google plans to appeal and said that the proposals were radical and go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case. On its part, the tech firm has defended itself by saying that it won users with quality and faces stiff competition from Amazon and other sites. The Larry Page and Sergey Brin-founded firm is the world’s fourth-largest company with a market capitalisation of over $2 trillion. Its parent company Alphabet is facing legal pressure from competitors and antitrust authorities.
In the US, antitrust enforcers have brought an ambitious set of cases against Big Tech companies over the past four years. This includes Meta Platforms, Amazon.com and Apple on the grounds of maintaining monopolies. Governments across the world are also under increasing pressure to tame tech giants. However, Google is unlikely to face a breakup order from EU antitrust in Europe shortly due to the complexity of the case. In the ongoing EU antitrust investigation, the firm earlier this year offered to sell its advertising marketplace AdX but European publishers rejected the proposal as insufficient.
While lawmakers try hard to curb rising dominance of big tech, experts remain sceptical of the material effect it will have. The stocks of the tech titan have not taken any major beating, indicating that any real reckoning will take an age. Users too are likely to continue to favour Google even when they have other options. An end to its long-standing dominance is not possible in a short duration.