US regulators want to punish Google for monopoly: includes sale of Chrome
Kyiv • UNN
The US Department of Justice is demanding that Google sell the Chrome browser and limit its monopoly on the search engine. Regulators also want to ban the company from entering into agreements to install the search engine by default.
US regulators want a federal judge to split Google to prevent the company from continuing to stifle competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained abusive monopoly over the past decade, UNN reports citing AP.
Details
The proposed separation was presented in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday night by the U.S. Department of Justice, calling for sweeping penalties that would include the sale of Google's industry-leading Chrome web browser and restrictions to prevent Android from supporting its own search engine.
The sale of Chrome "will permanently end Google's control over this critical search access point and allow competing search engines to access the browser that is the gateway to the Internet for many users," the US Department of Justice lawyers argued in their statement.
Although regulators did not demand that Google sell Android, they said that the judge should make it clear that the company may still need to get rid of the smartphone operating system if its oversight committee continues to see evidence of misconduct.
The wide range of sanctions recommended, as indicated, underscores how severely regulators working under the administration of US President Joe Biden believe Google should be punished following an August ruling by US District Judge Amit Mehta, who called the company a monopoly.
The decision makers at the Justice Department who will inherit the case when President-elect Donald Trump takes office next year may not be so adamant. Google's sentencing hearing in Washington is set to begin in April, and Mehta is aiming to issue his final ruling by Labor Day.
If Mehta approves the government's recommendations, Google will be forced to sell its 16-year-old Chrome browser within six months of the final decision.
The US Department of Justice also wants the judge to prohibit Google from entering into multi-billion dollar deals to entrench its dominant search engine as the default option on iPhones and other Apple devices. It would also prohibit Google from favoring its own services, such as YouTube or its recently launched Gemini artificial intelligence platform.
Kent Walker, Google's chief legal officer, has criticized the US Department of Justice for pursuing a "radical interventionist agenda that will harm Americans and America's global technology." In a blog post, Walker warned that an "overly broad proposal" would threaten individual privacy, undermining Google's early leadership in artificial intelligence, "arguably the most important innovation of our time.
The measures, if approved, threaten to upend a business that is expected to generate more than $300 billion in revenue this year.
It is still possible that the Justice Department could weaken its attempts to split Google, especially if Trump takes the widely expected step of replacing Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, whom Biden appointed to oversee the department's antitrust division.
Trump recently expressed concern that unbundling could destroy Google, but did not specify the alternative punishments he might have in mind. "What you can do without separation is make sure it's more honest," Trump said last month.
