Break up Google, US urges in landmark antitrust case
The US Justice Department says the best way to address Google's monopoly in internet search is to break up the $US1.81 trillion ($2.8 trillion) company, kicking off a three-week hearing that could reshape the technology giant and alter the power players in Silicon Valley.
Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in August that Google had broken antitrust laws to maintain its dominance in online search. He is now hearing arguments from the government and the company over how to best fix Google's monopoly and is expected to order those measures, referred to as 'remedies,' by the end of the summer.
In an opening statement in the hearing Monday, the government said Mehta should force Google to sell its popular Chrome web browser, which drives users to its search engine. Government lawyers also said the company should take steps to give competitors a leg up if the court wants to restore competition to the moribund market for online search.
'Your honour, we are not here for a Pyrrhic victory,' David Dahlquist, a Justice Department lawyer, said in his opening statement. 'This is the time for the court to tell Google and all other monopolists who are out there listening, and they are listening, that there are consequences when you break the antitrust laws.'
Google's lawyers countered that Mehta should narrowly target his remedies. Specifically, they said, the court should look only at a group of deals that the company makes with Apple, Mozilla, Samsung and others to be the search engine that automatically appears in web browsers and smartphones. These deals were at the heart of the government's case against the company.
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Google's proposal 'directly responds to this court's legal determinations, but it also does much more,' said John Schmidtlein, Google's lead trial lawyer.
The outcome in the case, US v. Google, could drastically change the Silicon Valley behemoth. Google faces mounting challenges, including a breakup of its ad technology business after a different federal judge ruled last week that the company held a monopoly over some of the tools that websites use to sell open ad space. In 2023, Google also lost an antitrust suit brought by the maker of the video game Fortnite, which accused the tech giant of violating competition laws with its Play app store.
The legal troubles could hurt Google as it battles OpenAI, Microsoft and Meta to lead a new era of artificial intelligence. Google has increasingly woven AI into its search. But the Justice Department has told Mehta he should make sure Google cannot parlay its search monopoly into similar dominance in AI.
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Trump suggested that Musk, who received a praise-filled send-off from Trump last week after overseeing his federal bureaucracy cost-cutting campaign, was upset because he missed working for Trump. "He's not the first," Trump said. "People leave my administration ... then at some point they miss it so badly, and some of them embrace it and some of them actually become hostile." As Trump was speaking, Musk wrote on X, "Slim Beautiful Bill for the win," a reference to the bill's official title, the Big Beautiful Bill Act. Musk followed that up with another post, saying he was fine with the cuts to electric vehicle credits as long as Republicans removed what he called a "mountain of disgusting pork" in wasteful spending from the bill. Musk came into the government with brash plans to cut $US2 trillion ($A3.1 trillion) out of the federal budget. He left last week having achieved far less than that, having cut about half of one per cent of total spending. 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