The US government may ask a judge for an order to dissolve Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
The US Department of Justice has listed this as one of the remedies after a judge ruled in August that Google built an illegal monopoly.
In a 32-page filing, the potential remedies have been laid out for the judge’s consideration as the case moves into the remedy phase. Alphabet is divesting certain parts of its company, including its Chrome browser and Android OS, and there’s a ruling that Google has to stop paying for its search engine to be pre-installed on new devices or set as default.
Google called Google’s proposals “radical”, and stated that they “go beyond the specific legal questions in this case”.
The Department of Justice may also ask Alphabet to release the indices and data it uses to power Google’s search engine and AI search.
The remedies may change, and the Department of Justice has said that it will provide a more detailed proposal next month.
The department stated: “For over a decade, Google controlled the most popular channels of distribution, leaving rivals little to no incentive to compete with users. To fully remedy these harms, it is not enough to end Google’s current control over distribution. It must also be ensured that Google can no longer control distribution in the future.
Alphabet shares were not much changed after hours. The tech giant’s market value has risen by almost 20% this year.
Amit P Mehta, a judge in August, found that Google, the company responsible for 90 percent of all internet searches worldwide, exploited their dominant position by excluding competitors. He claimed that Google paid $26.3 billion alone in 2021 to maintain its dominant share of the market and ensure its search engine is default on smartphones, browsers and other devices.
Mehta wrote that in his ruling, “Even if the new entrant was positioned in terms of quality to bid on new devices when an agreement expired, this firm could only compete if it was willing to pay its partners revenue shares of up to billions of dollars.
Google, of course understands that losing defaults will have a dramatic impact on its bottom line. Google, for example, has predicted that losing Safari as a default would lead to a drop in searches and billions in revenue.
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