The U.S. Department of Justice reportedly plans to ask a judge to order Google to divest one or more core products as a way to reduce the company’s dominance in the search market.
Google’s Chrome browser and Android mobile operating system could be among those core products, the Financial Times (FT) reported Wednesday (Nov. 20), citing unnamed sources.
Reached by PYMNTS, the DOJ declined to comment on the report.
A Google spokesperson directed the FT to a blog post from October in which the company said the “blueprint goes well beyond the legal scope of the court’s decision about search distribution contracts” and said the company plans to appeal.
This proposed solution from the DOJ is more expansive than an earlier one and follows a judge’s ruling earlier this year that Google developed an illegal monopoly in online search via exclusive deals with wireless carriers, browser developers and device manufacturers, according to the FT report.
In an earlier proposal, the DOJ sought to force Google to share search data with rivals and reduce the company’s ability to use that data to train generative artificial intelligence models, the report said.
The new proposal shows that the DOJ also wants to make it easier for AI companies to enter the search market and compete with Google in that market, per the report.
It also aims to force Google to stop paying partners to make its search engine the default on their browsers, according to the report.
A judge is likely to rule on any remedies in this case by mid-2025, per the report.
The DOJ said in an October court filing that “structural remedies” are on the table in the case against Google. This term is often used to describe the breakup of a company to prevent anti-competitive practices, PYMNTS reported Oct. 9.
“The DOJ’s radical and sweeping proposals risk hurting consumers, businesses and developers,” Google said in a statement shared with PYMNTS at the time, noting that “the DOJ’s outline also comes at a time when competition in how people find information is blooming, with all sorts of new entrants emerging and new technologies like [artificial intelligence] transforming the industry.”