As a federal judge prepares to rule on whether and how to break Google up, the search giant is pleading with the Trump administration to save it.
Bloomberg reported that Google representatives met last week with officials from the Department of Justice to persuade them to adopt a more lenient approach in a significant antitrust case. In August, a federal judge determined that Google maintained an illegal monopoly on search services. The Biden administration had previously suggested that Google divest its Chrome browser, among other changes, as a possible remedy in the case. Now, both parties are preparing to submit their final proposals to the court by Friday.
In a statement to Vanity Fair, Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said, “We routinely meet with regulators, including with the DOJ to discuss this case. As we’ve publicly said, we’re concerned the current proposals would harm the American economy and national security.”
President Donald Trump has also argued that a breakup could threaten America’s technological dominance. “It’s a very dangerous thing, because we want to have great companies,” he said during a Bloomberg event last fall. “We don’t want China to have these companies.”
Google’s quest for a lifeline from the Trump administration illustrates just how much has changed in the relationship between Trump and tech giants since his first term. During the first weeks of Trump’s first term in 2017, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and co-founder Sergey Brin rallied with Google employees in protest of the president’s immigration policies. In an internal meeting shortly after that election, Brin reportedly called the election “personally offensive” as a refugee and immigrant.
This time around, however, Brin and Pichai were among the tech titans standing behind the president—literally and figuratively—on Inauguration Day, even as he vowed to return “millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” In the lead-up to the inauguration, Google was among the companies that kicked in $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
Google is far from the only company attempting to secure the new president’s favor as a means of self-preservation. Now the question is whether these public displays of fealty will pay off.