US regulators seek to shatter up Google, forcing Chrome sale as part of monopoly punishment

U.S. regulators desire a federal judge to shatter up Google to prevent the business from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the history decade.

The proposed breakup floated in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Department of fairness calls for sweeping punishments that would include a sale of Google’s industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions to prevent Android from favoring its own search engine.

A sale of Chrome “will permanently stop Google’s control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet,” fairness Department lawyers argued in their filing.

Although regulators stopped short of demanding Google sell Android too, they asserted the judge should make it obvious the business could still be required to divest its smartphone operating structure if its oversight committee continues to view evidence of misconduct.

The broad scope of the recommended penalties underscores how severely regulators operating under President Joe Biden’s administration depend Google should be punished following an August ruling by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta that branded the business as a monopolist.

The fairness Department selection-makers who will inherit the case after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next year might not be as strident. The Washington, D.C. court hearings on Google’s punishment are scheduled to commence in April and Mehta is aiming to issue his final selection before Labor Day.

If Mehta embraces the government’s recommendations, Google would be forced to sell its 16-year-ancient Chrome browser within six months of the final ruling. But the business certainly would appeal any punishment, potentially prolonging a legal tussle that has dragged on for more than four years.

Besides seeking a Chrome spinoff and a corralling of the Android software, the fairness Department wants the judge to ban Google from forging multibillion-dollar deals to lock in its dominant search engine as the default alternative on Apple’s iPhone and other devices. It would also ban Google from favoring its own services, such as YouTube or its recently-launched artificial intelligence platform, Gemini.

Regulators also desire Google to license the search index data it collects from people’s queries to its rivals, giving them a better chance at competing with the tech giant. On the commercial side of its search engine, Google would be required to provide more transparency into how it sets the prices that advertisers pay to be listed near the top of some targeted search results.

Kent Walker, Google’s chief legal officer, lashed out at the fairness Department for pursuing “a radical interventionist agenda that would damage Americans and America’s global technology.” In a blog post, Walker warned the “overly broad proposal” would threaten personal privacy while undermining Google’s early leadership in artificial intelligence, “perhaps the most significant innovation of our period.”

Wary of Google’s increasing use of artificial intelligence in its search results, regulators also advised Mehta to ensure websites will be able to shield their content from Google’s AI training techniques.

The measures, if they are ordered, threaten to upend a business expected to generate more than $300 billion in turnover this year.

“The playing field is not level because of Google’s conduct, and Google’s standard reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired,” the fairness Department asserted in its recommendations. “The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages.”

It’s still feasible that the fairness Department could ease off attempts to shatter up Google, especially if Trump takes the widely expected step of replacing Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who was appointed by Biden to oversee the agency’s antitrust division.

Although the case targeting Google was originally filed during the final months of Trump’s first term in office, Kanter oversaw the high-profile trial that culminated in Mehta’s ruling against Google. Working in tandem with Federal Trade fee Chair Lina Khan, Kanter took a get-tough stance against large Tech that triggered other attempted crackdowns on industry powerhouses such as Apple and discouraged many business deals from getting done during the history four years.

Trump recently expressed concerns that a breakup might ruin Google but didn’t elaborate on alternative penalties he might have in mind. “What you can do without breaking it up is make sure it’s more fair,” Trump said last month. Matt Gaetz, the former Republican congressman that Trump nominated to be the next U.S. Attorney General, has previously called for the breakup of large Tech companies.

Gaetz faces a tough confirmation hearing.

This latest filing gave Kanter and his throng a final chance to spell out measures that they depend are needed to restore competition in search. It comes six weeks after fairness first floated the concept of a breakup in a preliminary outline of potential penalties.

But Kanter’s proposal is already raising questions about whether regulators seek to impose controls that extend beyond the issues covered in last year’s trial, and — by extension — Mehta’s ruling.

Banning the default search deals that Google now pays more than $26 billion annually to maintain was one of the main practices that troubled Mehta in his ruling.

It’s less obvious whether the judge will embrace the fairness Department’s contention that Chrome needs to be spun out of Google and or Android should be completely walled off from its search engine.

“It is probably going a little beyond,” Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh said of the Chrome breakup. “The remedies should match the damage, it should match the transgression. This does seem a little beyond that pale.”

Google rival DuckDuckGo, whose executives testified during last year’s trial, asserted the fairness Department is simply doing what needs to be done to rein in a brazen monopolist.

“Undoing Google’s overlapping and widespread illegal conduct over more than a decade requires more than agreement restrictions: it requires a range of remedies to make enduring competition,” Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo’s elder vice president of community affairs, said in a statement.

Trying to shatter up Google harks back to a similar punishment initially imposed on Microsoft a quarter century ago following another major antitrust trial that culminated in a federal judge deciding the software maker had illegally used his Windows operating structure for PCs to stifle competition.

However, an appeals court overturned an order that would have broken up Microsoft, a precedent many experts depend will make Mehta reluctant to leave down a similar road with the Google case.