Google said on Friday that a federal judge needed to do very little to fix its search monopoly.
The company proposed offering more options both to the companies that contract with it to be the automatic search engine and to the consumers using its popular Android cellphone operating system. The suggestions followed a federal judge’s landmark decision in August that found the Silicon Valley company had violated antitrust laws.
Last month, the U.S. government proposed forcing Google to sell Chrome, the world’s most popular web browser, among other measures.
The judge, Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is expected to decide how to address Google’s search monopoly by August. His ruling could cause enormous ripple effects, potentially reshaping the internet.
Here’s what to expect.
Why does Google face a breakup?
The Justice Department and several states sued Google in 2020, accusing it of illegally protecting its monopoly over internet search and search advertising.
Google for years had paid companies including Apple, Samsung and Mozilla billions of dollars to be the automatic search engine on smartphones and web browsers. The government said these contracts were designed to entrench Google’s dominance and make it harder for rivals to compete.
Google’s ironclad hold over online search allowed it to gather more data from users, which then made its product better and harder for rivals to dislodge, Justice Department lawyers argued during a 10-week trial last year.
Google countered, among other defenses, that it had simply created the best search product.
Judge Mehta ultimately ruled in favor of the government. Now he must decide how to solve the problem with “remedies” to restore competition to the market.
What did the Justice Department propose as fixes?
Beyond forcing Google to sell Chrome, the Justice Department said in a filing last month that the company should be barred from entering into the exclusive search engine agreements. The judge should also force Google to share its search results and data with rivals for a decade, the government said.
Google should be forced to choose between selling Android, its smartphone operating system, or being barred from taking steps that force companies to bundle its services with Android phones, the government said. And the company should shed any stakes in artificial intelligence companies that it has invested in, since A.I. can bolster search, the government added.
What is Google’s solution?
The Silicon Valley company said on Friday that it should continue to be allowed to pay other companies for its search engine to get prime placement. But it said those agreements should be less restrictive than in the past. Apple, for example, could select different search engines to come up automatically for iPhone and iPad users.
Cellphone makers using Google’s mobile operating system, Android, could also offer customers multiple options of search engines to select on the device when setting it up. Google said browser manufacturers like Apple and Mozilla should be allowed to change their default search engines at least every 12 months.
And the company proposed what it described in a blog post as a “robust mechanism” to comply with the court’s wishes, without “giving the government extensive power over the design of your online experience.”
“We don’t propose these changes lightly,” said Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs, in the blog post. “But we believe that they fully address the court’s findings, and do so without putting Americans’ privacy and security at risk or harming America’s global technology leadership.”
And then?
Judge Mehta has scheduled a hearing starting in April to ask both sides to present arguments for their proposals. Witnesses are also expected to testify.
Throughout the case, Judge Mehta has been careful not to tip his hand. He could take remedies from one side wholesale, or find his own middle ground. In court in November, he said it was clear that the remedies debate would include discussion of the impact of artificial intelligence.
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