Many were surprised – yet not shocked – when Alphabet, the parent company of Google, lost its court case against the U.S. Department of Justice. To push the victory even further, attorneys for the DOJ have included breaking up the Google monopoly to solve the issues.
Feds Release Possible Solutions
Judge Amit Mehta handed down his judgment for the plaintiffs in the antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet. He declared that Google did exist as a monopoly. Now that they have had time to savor the win, DOJ attorneys have released a 32-page filing that includes a list of possible solutions to end the monopoly, solutions that they cite as both “behavioral and structural.”
The filing specifically mentions breaking up the monopoly to prevent Google from using its products to give Google Search an advantage. Chrome, Google Play, and Android were specifically called out as products that are currently used to push Search. The DOJ is considering measures that would prevent Google from doing this in the future.
Google was also called out for paying large amounts of money to ensure that Google Search remains the default option on the iPhone and other devices and platforms. It was noted that Google’s rivals can’t compete against the revenue Google earns as a monopoly.
Google’s Reaction to DOJ Filing
Google, of course, wasn’t going to take this lying down in the plush fields of its domain that it has sowed over the years. It fought back in a blog post, noting that the possible DOJ solutions are “radical.”
The company also believes that these changes could make it worse for Internet users. They believe a Google breakup would kill Android and Chrome. They believe it would cause an end to Chrome and Android, as other companies wouldn’t be able to keep them as open source.
Oddly, Google added that such a move to break up the company would force them to share users’ personal information with their competitors, leaving privacy and security concerns. It was noted that other companies don’t have the strict security standards that Google does. Some people may find that last line to be hard to take in.
It was even explained in the blog post that strangling Google’s AI tools could limit innovation in the tech world at a critical time. Google believes that the government stepping into AI at this time could skew investment, distort incentives, and cripple upcoming business models.
Google comes off as overly defensive in the blog post, with a list of reasons that a breakup wouldn’t work – reasons that don’t seem very convincing. But if the DOJ does manage to pull this off and break everything up, it could lead to many long-term effects – good and bad – on Google Chrome, Android, and Alphabet’s many other products – and may users of these products could bear the brunt of it.
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