Internet search giant Google has hit back at the US Department of Justice’s (DoJ) suggestion that its operations should be broken up on anti-competition grounds, claiming doing so would have “significant unintended consequences” for consumers and businesses alike.
The proposal follows a landmark US court ruling from August 2024 that declared that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, had illegally sought to maintain its hold on the online search market through anti-competitive behaviour.
This ruling was the result of legal proceedings being launched against Alphabet by the DoJ in 2020 because of concerns it had about the dominant hold the company has on the internet search market.
At the time of the August 2024 ruling, there was talk that one of the possible next steps could involve the US government ordering the company to break up.
And now, several months on, the ruling has been followed up with the publication of a 32-page “proposed remedy framework” document that floats that idea as a possible means of remedying the US government’s anti-trust concerns.
“Google’s anticompetitive conduct resulted in interlocking and pernicious harms that present unprecedented complexities in a highly evolving set of markets,” the document stated.
“These markets are indispensable to the lives of all Americans, whether as individuals or as business owners, and the importance of effectively unfettering these markets and restoring competition cannot be overstated.”
The document goes onto state that the court has the authority to impose measures that “not only address the harms that already exist as a result of Google’s illegal conduct”, but also prevents a repeat of that behaviour in the future.
Areas of concern flagged in the document include the practice of preloading hardware devices with Google products, and suggests the use of “behavioural and structural remedies” to prevent Google from using products such as its Chrome internet browser, Play app store and Android operating system to “advantage” Google Search.
The DoJ is expected to publish a fuller and more comprehensive list of possible remedial measures to the situation next month, but – in the meantime – Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice-president of regulatory affairs at Google, has criticised the contents of the framework document in a blog post.
“We are concerned the DoJ is already signalling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case,” she wrote.
“This case is about a set of search distribution contracts. Rather than focus on that the government seems to be pursuing a sweeping agenda that will impact numerous industries and products, with significant unintended consequences for consumers, businesses, and American competitiveness.”
To reinforce this point, she listed a series of changes the DoJ is reportedly considering asking Google to implement that she claims would put the privacy and security of its customers at risk and hamper the ability of American businesses to innovate.
These changes include “forcing” Google to share its customers’ search queries and results with its competitors, and “splitting off Chrome and Android, which the company claims would change the business models of both tools” and “undermine Android and Google Play in their robust competition with Apple’s iPhone and App Store”.
Another suggested course of action could see Google forced to curbing the functionality of its artificial intelligence (AI) tools too.
“Business models in AI, much less winners and losers, have yet to be determined, and competition globally is fierce,” she said.
“There are enormous risks to the government putting its thumb on the scale of this vital industry – skewing investment, distorting incentives, hobbling emerging business models – all at precisely the moment that we need to encourage investment, new business models and American technological leadership.”
She then rounded out the blog post by describing the DoJ’s proposals as a “government overreach” that, in a fast-moving industry, may have “negative unintended consequences for American innovation and America’s consumers”.