Oct. 9 (UPI) — The U.S. Justice Department unveiled a raft of proposed changes to Google on Wednesday as part of an anti-trust suit that alleges the way the U.S.-tech giant promotes and distributes its key Google Search product harms competition and reduces consumer choice.
The filing in the U.S. District Court in Washington hinted that the justice department was looking at breaking up the company as one option to “prevent and restrain” Google’s monopolistic grip on the U.S. markets for general search services and general search text.
The filing argues that any remedy should free markets from Google’s exclusionary conduct; remove barriers to competition; deny Google the fruits of its illegal activities and block future monopolization of these and related markets after the company was found to have twice violated monopoly maintenance law.
“Plaintiffs have a duty to seek — and the Court has the authority to impose — an order that not only addresses the harms that already exist as a result of Google’s illegal conduct, but also prevents and restrains recurrence of the same offense of illegal monopoly maintenance going forward,” the filing states.
The Justice Department and eight states prosecuting the case said fixes for the key areas of concern — search and revenue sharing, generation and display of search results, advertising scale, and monetization and collection — could include “contract requirements and prohibitions; non-discrimination product requirements; data and interoperability requirements; and structural requirements.”
The plaintiffs said they were also looking at “behavioral and structural” changes to prevent Google from using Chrome, Play, and Android to “advantage” Google search and Google search-related products and features.
They emphasized that mitigating Google’s built-in advantage over its competitors or new entrants to the market extended to emerging search access points and features, including artificial intelligence.
Revenue-sharing deals with Apple and Samsung for which Google pays billions of dollars to make its search engine the default on their devices were also in the firing line with the Justice Department floating the idea of a mandatory “choice screen,” on which users could select from a range of search engines.
The Department of Justice further wants Google to provide competitors its data from its search index and models, including its AI-assisted search features and its ad ranking data, and ban it from retaining or using data itself that it claims it cannot share with others due to privacy concerns.
“Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow,” the agency said.
Wednesday’s filing follows an August ruling after a four-year investigation that Google had an illegal monopoly in the general search market.
The judge in the case has promised a ruling on the remedies by August but with Google’s vow to appeal the original monopoly ruling the likelihood is that would push back any final resolution by years.
The Mountain View, Calif., company rebuked what it said were “radical and sweeping” proposals by the Justice Department that risked “hurting consumers businesses and developers” and expressed fears it was trying to impose broader changes unrelated to the case.
“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,” Regulatory Affairs VP Lee-Anne Mulholland wrote in a blog post.
She claimed the proposed changes threatened Google users’ privacy and security, would hold back advances in AI, and that splitting off from Google of Chrome and Android, which are free, “would break them – -and many other things.”
Experts told CNBC they did not believe the government would go as far as breaking up Google and that the legal battle would probably end with Google agreeing to end some exclusivity deals like the one it has with Apple and making rivals’ search engines easier to access.
