US justice department officials plan to ask a judge to force Google to sell off its Chrome browser to dismantle the monopoly it has over the internet search market, in a major intervention against one of the world’s biggest tech companies.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) last month filed court papers saying it was considering enforcing “structural remedies” to prevent Google from using some its products.
The DoJ will reportedly push for Google, which is owned by Alphabet, to sell the browser and also ask a judge to require new measures related to artificial intelligence as well as its Android smartphone operating system, according to Bloomberg.
Competition officials, along with a number of US states that have joined the case against the Silicon Valley company, also plan to recommend that the federal judge Amit Mehta imposes data licensing requirements.
Google has said it will challenge any case by the DoJ and said the proposals marked an “overreach” by the government that would harm consumers.
If Mehta accepts the proposals, they could drastically reshape the global online search market, of which Google controls 90%, as well as the company’s role in the fast-growing AI sector.
In the UK, the competition watchdog has dropped an investigation into Google’s partnership with Anthropic, the US company that makes the Claude series of AI models.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decided that the arrangement, which involved a $2bn investment by Google, did not amount to it acquiring material control of Anthropic. The investigation had been launched amid concerns about the concentration of AI power in the big tech companies.
The action against Google in the US follows a court ruling in August in favour of the DoJ that found that the company had violated antitrust laws and spent billions building up an illegal monopoly.
The DoJ’s filing last month said Google’s conduct had resulted in “pernicious harms” to users, and that the importance of restoring competition to a market that was “indispensable” could not be overstated.
The case against Google was filed under the first Donald Trump administration and continued under Joe Biden.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice-president of regulatory affairs, said the DoJ continued to push a “radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case”.
“The government putting its thumb on the scale in these ways would harm consumers, developers and American technological leadership at precisely the moment it is most needed.”
The case has echoes of the US government’s attempt to break up Microsoft in the 1990s in an effort to challenge its dominance over the software market.
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In 2000, a judge ruled in favour of the DoJ and said the company would have to be split in two but this was successfully appealed against by Microsoft a year later and the justice department eventually dropped its case.
Google is to submit its proposed remedies in response to the DoJ by 20 December.
On its examination of Google’s partnership with Anthropic, the CMA said it had found that Google had not acquired the ability to materially influence Anthropic’s commercial policy and therefore the partnership did not meet the threshold for UK merger control to apply.
Joel Bamford, the CMA’s executive director of mergers, said: “This is another decision by the CMA which provides greater clarity for businesses and their investors.
“We know fair, open and effective competition unlocks opportunities for investment and supports innovation in important markets like these, and it’s through merger reviews that we can appropriately assess the nature and impact of complex partnerships such as the one between Google and Anthropic.”
The watchdog also said its so-called turnover test was not met, as Anthropic UK’s turnover does not exceed £70m.
Anthropic said last month that its Claude AI model can now perform computing tasks including filling out forms, planning an outing and building a website.