Breakups are rarely the first-choice scenario.
For evidence, just take a look at Taylor Swift’s discography, the momentarily thorny second act in a Y2K romcom, and, as of Tuesday night, the Justice Department’s message to Google.
The Department of Justice submitted a court filing outlining possible remedies after US district judge Amit Mehta ruled back in August that Google’s search engine amounted to a monopoly in the search market. Mehta’s ruling stemmed from an antitrust lawsuit the DOJ filed in 2020 that alleged Google was “unlawfully maintaining monopolies” over search.
Per the new filing it presented to Mehta, the DOJ is considering asking the federal judge to break up Google, which could lead to the first breakup of its kind since the 1980s.
That’s the headline news, but it’s just one of a number of potential remedies from the DOJ, and the Justice Department maintains that it “reserve[s] the right to add or remove potential proposed remedies identified in this high-level framework.”
Other proposed remedies include restricting Google’s ability to use artificial intelligence when culling websites for search results, as well as limiting or prohibiting default agreements and “other revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products.”
“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little-to-no incentive to compete for users,” per the DOJ’s filing. “Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.”
Google responded to the proposed remedies in a blog post. “This is the start of a long process and we will respond in detail to the DOJ’s ultimate proposals as we make our case in court next year,” the company said. “However, we are concerned the DOJ is already signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”
The tech giant called the DOJ’s proposal “radical and sweeping,” cautioning it “may have negative unintended consequences for American innovation and America’s consumers.”
None of this is shaking out particularly soon, though. Mehta has said he’s planning to rule on proposed remedies by August 2025. And Google has already stated its intention to appeal Mehta’s August ruling, which would draw out the process longer.
It’s almost as if someone tipped them off to that ancient wisdom: Breaking up is hard to do.
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