DOJ Weighs Breakup of Google for ‘Unlawful Conduct’ in Search-Engine Dominance

The U.S. Department of Justice said it’s considering breaking up Google to dismantle the company’s search engine monopoly.

“The starting point for addressing Google’s unlawful conduct is undoing its effects on search distribution,” the DOJ said in a late Tuesday filing. “For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little-to-no incentive to compete for users.”

To make online search more competitive, the DOJ said it may ask a federal judge to separate Google’s businesses, including its Chrome browser, Play app store and Android operating system.

That move would prevent the company from using its products and features to “advantage Google search and Google search-related products and features,” the department noted.

Nearly 90% of online searches in the U.S. go through Google. But as The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week, Google is starting to lose some of its dominance over search revenue to Amazon and TikTok, among other competitors. In 2025, Google’s cut of U.S. search ads is expected to drop below 50% for the first time in more than a decade, according to eMarketer projections shared with WSJ.

Google, in a blog post on Wednesday, said the DOJ’s filing called for “radical changes” that were unnecessary.

“This is the start of a long process and we will respond in detail to the DOJ’s ultimate proposals as we make our case in court next year,” the company wrote. “However, we are concerned the DOJ is already signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”

Shares of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, were down 2.2% a few hours into trading on Wednesday.

The DOJ’s filing came after a federal judge in August ruled Google broke antitrust laws in an effort to maintain its monopoly on Internet searches.

“Google is a monopolist and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled, four years after the Department of Justice initially sued the tech company. Judge Mehta is expected to make his recommendations for addressing Google’s search dominance by next summer.

The DOJ, in its Tuesday filing, said it was also “considering remedies,” like blocking Google from paying Apple to be the default browser on iPhones, that could encourage search competition.

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