DOJ Reveals Its Plan for Breaking Up Google’s Search Monopoly

U.S. Government Report Warns That a Dirty Bomb Could Be Bad for Business
October 12, 2024
How Intel Lost the Sony PlayStation Business
October 12, 2024
Show all

The agency said in a court filing that it is considering remedies ranging from forcing Google to split off parts of its business to requiring the company to share key data and details about its search algorithms with competitors.

The Department of Justice has laid out its broad-strokes plan for ending Google’s monopoly over internet search after winning its antitrust case against the company in August. The sweeping changes could end Google’s position as the default search engine on billions of devices and require the company to share key information about its search algorithms with competitors. The regulators’ proposals, laid out Tuesday in a filing with the D.C. federal court where the antitrust case was heard, are aimed not only at rectifying Google’s past anti-competitive practices but also at preventing it from unfairly dominating emerging technologies, particularly internet searches enabled by generative AI tools. Any changes to Google’s business model will take time, if they happen at all. The DOJ’s filing indicates the general categories of remedies it might seek but the agency still has significant work to do before it puts forward a detailed plan for the court to rule on. Google, meanwhile, has said it will appeal the court’s decision. Google described the DOJ’s proposals as “radical” and said “government overreach in a fast-moving industry may have negative unintended consequences for American innovation and America’s consumers.” The first step necessary to unwind Google’s illegal monopoly, according to the DOJ, will likely be to “limit or end” the company’s use of contracts and unfair revenue-sharing agreements that have enshrined Google as the pre-installed search engine on all Android devices and the Chrome browser. It could potentially also include forcing Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to split off the Android and Chrome divisions of its business. Google’s search tools are powered by the huge amount of data its web crawlers have indexed and the ranking algorithms that prioritize which results users see first. To level the playing field for competitors, the DOJ said it might try to make the company share the indexes, search results, underlying ranking signals, and models used for Google search, including AI-powered search. “Google’s ability to leverage its monopoly power to feed artificial intelligence features is an emerging barrier to competition and risks further entrenching Google’s dominance,” the DOJ wrote, adding that potential remedies could include prohibiting the company from signing contracts with web publishers that deny rival search engines access to their sites and forcing Google to allow publishers to opt out of having their content scraped and used to generate AI summaries at the top of search results. The final category of remedies the DOJ proposed would aim to spread the wealth generated by advertisements attached to internet searches by making it easier for smaller competitors to enter markets without being crushed by Google’s economy of scale and by requiring Google to be more transparent with advertisers in its ad auctions.
antitrustDepartment of JusticeGoogleInternet searchMonopoly
Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily.

Xbox is currently one of the few companies that doesn’t let you buy games on its app, but the recent Epic v. Google decision is giving its plans for a mobile store a shot in the arm.

If Google is spooked by the DOJ’s aggressive legal tactics, it’s not showing it.

Before Hurricane Milton makes landfall, you should get familiar with emergency satellite connections available for the latest iPhones and Pixel devices.

Every chipmaker is going for broke on AI, but Mediatek’s Dimensity 9400 SoC pushes the idea of “agentic” AI that’s capable of controlling your phone for you.

We were fans of the Galaxy Buds 3 Pro until we came across the Pixel Buds Pro 2.

While Google’s Epic loss will require Android to open up to third party app stores beyond Play Store, Google said it can’t be a monopoly since Apple exists.
Discover the Winners of the 2024 Gizmodo Science Fair ➜ We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.
©2024 GIZMODO USA LLC. All rights reserved. Mode
Follow us
Mode
Follow us

https://gizmodo.com/doj-reveals-its-plan-for-breaking-up-googles-search-monopoly-2000509815

Aman Mehndiratta
Aman Mehndiratta
Aman Mehndiratta encourages the concept of corporate philanthropy due to the amazing advantages of practicing this. He is a philanthropist and an entrepreneur too. That is why exactly he knows the importance of corporate philanthropy for the betterment of society.

Comments are closed.