(Finance) – Il Department of Justice of the United States would be considering the possibility of spinning off Google to counteract the monopoly exercised on search engines. This is what the Financial Times reported, referring to a document prepared by the court which is evaluating how to sanction the tech giant after the historic ruling arrived in August and in which it was defined as a “monopolist”.
The document describes the sanctions that the Department of Justice may request from the judge presiding over the case. In particular, reference is made to “behavioral and structural remedies” that prosecutors could seek to prevent Google from using its products – such as the browser Chromethe app store Play or the operating system Android – to give its search engine a competitive advantage over current competitors but also new players.
Among these remedies has been included the possibility of forcing Google to share the research data of users with rivals and limit its ability to use search results to train new models and products generative artificial intelligence. A decision on the case is expected by August 2025. However, Google has already made it known that it will appeal the decision until the Supreme Court of the United States.
“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the distribution channels most popular, leaving rivals little or no incentive to compete for users,” the Justice Department said. “Redressing these harms requires not only ending Google’s control over distribution today, but also ensuring that Google cannot control tomorrow’s distribution,” he added.
“A dismemberment Google would retool a search marketplace in which the company handles more than 90 percent of online queries and transform a business that has made its parent company, Alphabet, one of the most valuable in the world,” the Financial Times noted.
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