Justice Department calls for sanctions against Google in landmark antitrust case

The Justice Department is proposing a series of sanctions against Google to prevent it from monopolizing the search engine market. In a filing late on Tuesday, the government laid out its framework for reining in the tech giant.

Proposals include ending Google's exclusive contracts with companies like Apple and Samsung and banning certain types of data tracking. The government wrote that it is considering “behavioral and structural” remedies that would ensure Google cannot use its Chrome browser or Android phones in ways that favor its search engine, but did not outline what the structural remedies would be.

“Google's anticompetitive conduct has resulted in interlocking and prejudicial harm,” the filing reads. The markets that Google controls, it continued, “are essential to the lives of all Americans, whether as individuals or business owners, and the importance of effectively disrupting these markets and restoring competition cannot be overstated.”

The 32-page filing follows federal judge Amit Mehta's ruling in August that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly on the search engine market. That ruling was the culmination of an antitrust case by the Department of Justice Google was sued in 2020which was attended by 38 state attorneys general.

The Justice Department accused Google of illegally conducting its business dealings to ensure its dominance in the search engine market. Later a 10-week trial last fallMehta ruled in favor of the judiciary. Google said it will appeal the decision.

A preliminary set of motions filed by the government on Tuesday to seek remedies against Google In the filing, the Justice Department said it intends to go through court-ordered discovery for more evidence to support its position. It will file a more refined framework in November and Google will have a chance to propose its own remedy in December.

In a blog post published Tuesday night, Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president of global affairs, wrote, “We are concerned that the DOJ is already signaling requests to go beyond specific legal issues in this case.”

Mulholland appears to be interpreting the government's filing as a call to break up Google's Chrome and Android businesses. He argues that developing these businesses has cost the company billions. They are free and open-source code that has benefited competitors and customers, he wrote.

“Make no mistake: breaking them up would change their business models, raise device prices, and weaken Android and Google Play in their strong competition with Apple's iPhone and App Store,” he continued.

This is a major turning point for Big Tech's control. Monopolies are not illegal in themselves, but using monopoly power to maintain market dominance is against the law.

The last antitrust case of this magnitude to go to trial was in 1998, when The Justice Department sued Microsoft. The lawsuit centers on claims that Microsoft has illegally bundled its various products in a way that both stifles competition and forces people to use its products.

Then a judge ruled in favor of the judiciary, Dr Microsoft violated antitrust laws and “an oppressive thumb on the scale of competitive fortunes.”

In the last quarter of a century, technology companies have gathered a lot of power and now play an important role in most people's daily lives. Google's parent Alphabet is one of the world's most valuable companies — now worth more than $2 trillion — and the word “Google” is synonymous with Internet search.

The company controls around 90% of the US search engine marketWhile its closest competitors, Bing and Yahoo, each have about 3% market share.

If Mehta agrees with the Justice Department and decides to severely limit Google's reach, it could have a ripple effect across the industry.

What the Justice Department Wants from Google

The push for a Justice Department case against Google focuses on the company's exclusive deals with device makers like Apple and Samsung. During the trial, internal documents and witnesses revealed that Google paid billions of dollars each year to ensure it was installed on smartphones, default search engines like the iPhone, and web browsers like Mozilla Firefox.

Witness testimony revealed that Google paid its partners. For example, only in 2021, Google It has spent a total of $26.3 billion on its contracts Must be the default search engine. Apple's most lucrative partnership was with Google, which brought in $18 billion from the search giant in one year. According to The New York Times.

The government argued that these monopoly agreements make it difficult for rivals to move forward and leave consumers with less choice. Google's lawyers argued that these were agreements that the search engine's partners chose to enter into in their own agreements.

One of the remedies it is evaluating is limiting or prohibiting the contracts, the Justice Department wrote in its Tuesday night filing. “To fully remedy these damages would require not only ending Google's control over today's distribution, but also ensuring that Google cannot control tomorrow's distribution,” the filing said.

During the month-long trial last year, Google argued that its search engine was the most popular because it was the best product out there and people liked it. When Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified, he said paying billions of dollars to ensure its search made sense by default.

“We want to make it very, very seamless and easy for users to use our service,” Pichai said.

Search engine DuckDuckGo is a much smaller competitor to Google. A Blog post Last month, CEO Gabriel Weinberg wrote that limiting Google's monopoly would level the playing field.

“Google likes to claim that everyone chooses Google,” Weinberg wrote. “But most consumers don't: they just go with the default.”

In its filing, the Justice Department said it is evaluating other remedies, such as regulating how much data Google tracks online. The government said the tracking raises “real privacy concerns” that could not only harm users, but “deny competitors scale.” Additionally, the Justice Department assessed Google's advertising business and said it was considering remedies that would “create more competition and lower barriers to entry.”

Once the Justice Department and Google issue more motions in November and December, another trial will follow next April. Mehta will also preside over that case and hear both sides as they argue their case for possible remedies.

Google only Wrapping up the bulk of other judgments The Justice Department brought in its advertising business, where the government alleged that the company illegally controlled advertising tools for publishers and advertisers. Closing arguments in that case are expected in November

The US government has targeted several other big tech companies in antitrust cases. There have been cases against it for the past few years the amazon, apple and Facebook parents metawhich owns Facebook and Instagram, over business practices the government says hurt both competitors and consumers.

In its case against Google, the government used the 1998 Microsoft suite as a blueprint. Bill Kovacic, an antitrust law professor at George Washington University Law School and former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, told NPR in August that the Justice Department's victory against Google could pave the way for other cases.

“This lays a foundation for obtaining a substantial remedy in this case involving Google,” he said. “And it speeds up Federal Trade Commission prosecutions of the Justice Department and other big tech companies.”

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