The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) is planning to make a rare move to break up Alphabet's Google after a recent court verdict held that the search giant illegally monopolised online search market, Bloomberg reported citing sources. The antitrust move, if made, will have come decades after similar attempt to break-up Microsoft, the undisputed king of the tech world in pre-social media and even pre-Google era. The attempt to break up Microsoft had failed.
Even if government does not force Google to break up, it may force lesss severe steps such as forcing Google to share more data with its competitors and stop practices that give it unfair advantage in developing Artificial Intelligence tools. As per the report, the government move may also seek to divest Google of Android operating system and Chrome browser alongwith Adwords, the search text advertising platform of Google.
DoJ plans have followed an August 5 court ruling in which Judge Amit Mehta held that Google illegally monopolised online search and search text ads. Although Google is planning to appeal, the judge has told both sides in the case to be ready for next phase of the case in which government may make proposals, one of which may be breaking up of the search giant.
No comment from Google yet
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There was no immediate comment from Google or the DoJ.
If the US government indeed submits such proposal, it will need to be accepted by Judge Mehta who will then direct the company to comply.
The Bloomberg report said that lawyers from the justice department have been interacting with companies unhappy with Google's search practices which compel them to provide it information to enable development of its AI tools.
Google is already under judicial pressure. In December, a jury in California held that the search giant monopolised distribution of Android app.
