DOJ Searches for Remedies in Google Monopoly Case

Dan Meier 09 October, 2024 

As the US Department of Justice’s antitrust trial against Google’s alleged ad tech monopoly rages on, the DOJ is still weighing up what to do about the tech giant’s last monopoly deemed illegal by the US courts.

Back in August, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Alphabet had obtained its search monopoly by illegal practices. Yesterday the DOJ said in a court filing it is considering breaking up Google’s business as one of the potential remedies to restore competition to the search market, including the forced divestment of the Android operating system, Chrome browser, or Google Ads.

“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little-to-no incentive to compete for users,” said the DOJ. “Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.”

Fetching results

The filing also suggested the agency could order Google to open up the data underpinning its search results and AI products to rival search engines, including Microsoft’s Bing. According to Judge Mehta’s ruling, 89.2 percent of search queries in 2020 went through Google, with Bing in second place with just 5.5 percent of queries.

While Google claimed that its search engine’s popularity is down to the superior relevance of its results, its rivals argued that relevance improves with the continued use of the product, meaning its advantage comes as a direct result of its dominance in the market. Allowing its competitors to access that data could therefore help level the playing field.

That dominance stems from the revenue sharing agreements (RSA) that make Google the default search engine on the most commonly used devices, the judge heard in August, with payments totalling more than $26 billion in 2021. Ending the RSA model is therefore another key consideration for the DOJ.

Another option on the table involves restricting Google from investing in search competitors or potential rivals. The DOJ is also considering requirements that force Google to provide more information and control to advertisers over where their ads appear, in order to rein in the tech giant’s dominance over search text ads.

The other concern cited by the DOJ is the disruptive impact that AI will have on online search. “Google’s ability to leverage its monopoly power to feed artificial intelligence features is an emerging barrier to competition and risks further entrenching Google’s dominance,” said the filing. The agency may therefore force Google to allow websites to opt out of its AI products.

The agency said it will provide further proposals on potential remedies next month. The proposed remedy is then planned to go to trial next spring, with a decision expected by August 2025.

Google’s objections

Google has announced plans to appeal Judge Mehta’s decision, but cannot do so until a remedy has been finalised. And the breakup of Google’s business looks to be an unlikely outcome, not least because it will be hardest fought by the company.

In a blog post published today, Google argued that “splitting off Chrome or Android would break them – and many other things.” Spinning off the products would raise the cost of devices, according to the company, and impact the businesses and consumers that use the web browser and operating system.

Google called the DOJ’s proposals “radical”, arguing that its requests “go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.” The company described the move to open up its search data as a risk to privacy and security, arguing that “bad actors could access them to identify you and your search history.”

On the search ads front, Google suggested the proposals would make “online ads less valuable for publishers and merchants, and less useful for consumers.” It claimed that “competition is thriving” in search, with new entrants emerging and new ways of finding information growing online. And the company called competition “globally fierce” in the field of AI, suggesting that restricting Google’s AI tools risked disincentivising innovation in the space.

But the company’s main argument was that the proposals went “beyond the legal scope of the Court’s decision about Search distribution contracts,” suggesting that ending the revenue sharing agreements could be the most likely outcome. However, with ongoing investigations into Google’s ad tech dominance in the UK and EU, as well as the ongoing antitrust case in the US, further sanctions could be coming down the line.

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2024-10-09T12:04:37+01:00

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