A week of contrasts for Google is coming to an end. On Wednesday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences named two of its scientists as winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They are Demis Hassabis, director of Google’s main artificial intelligence laboratory, and John Jumper, one of his team members. They were rewarded for designing the algorithms that successfully solved a problem that humanity had been trying to solve for 50 years: predicting the complex structures of proteins.
This recognition also rewards Google’s enormous investment in the design of technologies applied outside of digital advertising, the gold mine that supports its entire structure. One of the most important milestones in the nearly 30-year history of a company that began as the class project of two university students and grew into a global enterprise. A company whose days could be numbered.
Just hours before receiving the news of the Nobel Prize, the US Department of Justice raised the possibility of dismantling it to break its illegal monopoly. Last August, a federal judge ruled that Google violated the country’s competition laws because of its maneuvers to dominate the search market and generate a funnel that ensnared the entire digital advertising industry .
The court ruled that Google spent billions over the years to enter into secret deals with other companies, such as cell phone manufacturers, to set its search engine as the default search engine on all their products . “After carefully reviewing and weighing the testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopoly and has acted as such to maintain its monopoly,” the judgment states. The company appealed.
The decision is one of the most important antitrust decisions in recent decades. The solution proposed by Joe Biden’s government is just as clear. In a 32-page document addressed to the judge, the Department of Justice asserts that “structural solutions” are necessary to correct the situation: dividing Google’s different businesses, thus reducing its ability to dominate all parts of the digital industry .
“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving its competitors with little or no incentive to compete for users. To fully remedy these damages, it is necessary not only to end Google’s control over distribution today, but also to ensure that Google cannot control distribution tomorrow,” the lawsuit states.
Google calls the proposal “radical”
“The Justice Department’s sweeping and sweeping proposals risk harming consumers, businesses, and developers,” Google responded, saying the Biden administration was going too far.
“This case concerns a set of research distribution contracts. Instead of focusing on this, the government appears to be pursuing a far-reaching agenda that will affect many industries and products,” says the multinational. “The Justice Department’s project also comes at a time when competition in how people find information is booming, with the emergence of all kinds of new entrants and new technologies like artificial intelligence. who are transforming the sector.”
Google uses two of the classic arguments of American digital giants to warn of the danger of their possible dismemberment: innovation and security. On the one hand, he says the move can “put obstacles in the way of Google’s artificial intelligence tools and slow down American innovation at a critical time,” when the market is not yet regulated. While two of its main experts have just won the Nobel Prize.
On the other hand, it says that “forcing Google to share your search queries, clicks and results with competitors puts your privacy and security at risk.” The multinational assures that queries made in its search engine “are generally” confidential, but “in the hands of another company without strong security practices”, they could constitute a security risk.
These statements from Google contrast with the reality revealed by various investigations into the security vulnerability represented by its advertising tracking. This not only happened to ordinary users, but it became a method of espionage by Russian or Chinese intelligence services to obtain sensitive data from Western politicians and military personnel. Additionally, its search engine has also been plagued by scams and false advertisements that have crept into its sponsored results.
The case will be settled in court throughout 2025. A conviction of the multinational would in no way constitute a definitive sentence to dismemberment. This is evidenced by the only case of this magnitude on digital territory that the American authorities have brought to court. In 2000, a judge ordered Microsoft to be split into two separate companies: one for Windows and another for the rest of its software, after pointing out that the company was engaging in monopolistic practices with the operating system.
A year later, the Court of Appeal overturned this decision and allowed Microsoft to avoid its split in a controversial decision. The magistrates imposed restrictions on its behavior with Windows and obligations to give space to its competitors, but these measures did not have a significant long-term impact. Over time, many restrictions expired or were relaxed, and Microsoft was able to maintain its dominant position in the operating system market without drastically changing its business model.
