Will Google have to split into several entities? This radical hypothesis worries Wall Street. This is one of the avenues that the American government seems to be considering, which is urging the digital giant to modify its model to open its search engine to competition. In a thirty-page document sent to Washington federal judge Amit Mehta, posted by The Vergethe Department of Justice (DOJ) is talking about possible “structural” changes, a term that many observers translate as a split.
The American government therefore suggests preventing the technology giant from using its Chrome browser, its Google Play Store application store and its Android mobile operating system to give an advantage to its search engine. “For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels,” the DOJ says. “We must not only end Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensure that Google cannot control distribution tomorrow,” he believes.
On August 5, 2024, Amit Mehta found Google guilty of anti-competitive practices in the management and promotion of its famous search engine. “Google is a monopoly and it acted in such a way as to maintain this monopoly,” ruled this judge following a resounding trial which pitted the government and the company for several months. This trial notably highlighted the staggering sums paid by the Alphabet subsidiary to ensure the default installation of Google Search with manufacturers of smartphones and Internet browsers.
“Splitting Chrome and Android would destroy them”
Following this decision, “remedies”, that is to say concessions, must be found so that this monopoly situation is disrupted. The document published Tuesday is only a preliminary version of the recommendations that will be sent in November 2024. But the possibility of dismantling Google or requiring profound changes in the way it does business marks a profound change on the part of the authorities of competition from the American government who have largely left the tech giants alone since their failure to dismantle Microsoft. In 2000, a judge ordered Microsoft to be dissolved for illegally undermining competition, but the decision was overturned on appeal a year later.
“Splitting Chrome and Android would destroy them and many other things,” responded Google, through Lee-Anne Mulholland, in charge of regulatory affairs at the company, in a response published on his blog. A forced separation “would change their economic model, increase the cost of devices and undermine Android and Google Play in their competition with the iPhone and the App Store”, Apple’s application store, continues Google, which weighed in September 2024, 90% of the global online search market and even 94% for smartphones, according to the StatCounter website.
The question of data sharing
Among other avenues for reform, the first version of the government’s recommendations to the judge mentions the obligation that would be placed on Google to make accessible the data and programming models used to generate results through its search engine.
The DOJ also plans to ask the magistrate to prohibit Google from using or retaining data that it refuses to share with third-party companies. “If Google were forced to share its data, we could live on a planet where many competitors offered us different ways to access the world’s knowledge. We could have a search engine focused on privacy, one on shopping or even one dedicated to the circulation of high-quality information content”, indicated last August the investigative journalist Julia Angwin, specialist in the study of algorithms, In the New York Times. According to Google, possible sharing of search data and results with other internet players “would present a risk to the protection of your data and your security”.
A long legal battle in perspective
More generally, for the Californian company, the recommendations of the American government “go well beyond the legal questions addressed in this file”, believes Lee-Anne Mulholland. Google, which faces a broader legal offensive over alleged violations of competition laws, is deploying battalions of lawyers to make its case and will likely continue to do so for a long time. Judge Amit Mehta has scheduled hearings for the appeal requests in April 2025 and has indicated that he intends to issue a decision by August 2025.
Whatever the judge’s final decision, Google is expected to appeal, which could drag out the process for years and possibly go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Department of Justice will therefore have to wait before it can perhaps achieve its greatest antitrust victory.