- U.S. Justice Department is considering options including breaking up Alphabet’s Google, according to Bloomberg News on Tuesday.
- The Justice Department could force Google to share data with competitors and take steps to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in artificial intelligence products.
OUR TAKE
Over the past four years, federal antitrust regulators have sued Meta Platforms, Amazon, and Apple, claiming the companies are illegally maintaining monopolies. Microsoft settled with the Justice Department in 2004 over allegations that it forced Windows users to use Internet Explorer.
–Zora Lin, BTW reporter
What happened
U.S. Justice Department is considering options including breaking up Alphabet’s Google, according to Bloomberg News on Tuesday. A week ago, a judge ruled that the tech giant illegally monopolised the online search market.
The ruling, issued last week, found that Google violated antitrust laws by spending billions of dollars to build an illegal monopoly and become the world’s default search engine. The ruling is seen as the first major victory for federal authorities in their fight against the market dominance of tech giants.
Other options for the Justice Department include forcing Google to share data with competitors and taking steps to prevent Google from gaining an unfair advantage in artificial intelligence products, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Stripping off the Android operating system is one of the remedies most often discussed by Justice Department lawyers. Officials are also considering forcing Google to sell its search advertising program AdWords and possibly spin off its Chrome web browser.
Also read: Google halts AdSense payments to Russia
Also read: OpenAI emerges as a major threat to Google with AI search
Why it’s important
Finding that Google illegally monopolised the online search market is a major victory for federal authorities, breaking the tech giant’s dominant position in the market and setting the stage for greater competition and consumer protection.
Forcing Google to share data with competitors and taking measures to prevent unfair competition will help ensure the fairness and transparency of market competition and maintain the normal order of competition between enterprises.
Steps such as the possible spin-off of the Android operating system and the search advertising program AdWords are expected to create more opportunities for other companies, promote innovation and technology development, and push the development of the industry in a more open and healthy direction.
