He United States Government revealed that there is even the possibility of demand division of Google among the measures aimed at preventing the multinational from exercising a monopoly position, after last August a federal court ruled that the company violated antitrust laws Americans after verifying that controls around 90% of the market searches on the Internet.
In a 32-page document filed with the court hearing the case, the Department of Justice, as plaintiff, proposes to consider different solutions to resolve problems such as the distribution of research and the sharing of revenue from Google, generating and displaying search results, advertising scale. and monetization, as well as the accumulation and use of data.
In this sense, it emphasizes that, for each area, the remedies necessary to prevent and stop the maintenance of the company’s monopoly could require contractual requirements and prohibitions; product non-discrimination requirements; data and interoperability requirements; as well as “structural requirements”.
Among the battery of proposed measures, the plaintiffs envisage “behavioral and structural” remedies which They would prevent Google from using products like Chrome, Play and Android to promote Google search and related products and features, including access points and emerging search capabilities, such as AI, compared to competitors or new entrants.
They also propose solutions that would limit or end Google’s use of contracts, monopoly profits and other tools to control or influence established and emerging search-related products and distribution channels, including browsers, search applications and AI.
As such, plaintiffs are considering remedies that would limit or prohibit, among other things, default agreements, pre-installation agreements, and other revenue sharing agreements related to search and search-related products.
“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,” notes the Department of Justice, for which, to completely repair this damage, it not only must we end Google’s control over distribution today, “but also to ensure that Google cannot control distribution tomorrow.”
Google considers this to be a “radical” measure
On your side, Google responded by calling the proposed changes “radical.” by the Justice Department, warning that they risk harming consumers, businesses and developers.
In this sense, Lee-Anne Mulhollandvice president of regulatory affairs at Google, stressed that this was the start of a long process and assured that the company would respond in detail to the final proposals of the Ministry of Justice when it presents its case to the court next year.
“However, We are concerned that the Department of Justice is already reporting requests that go well beyond legal issues. specific to this case,” he added.
The Mountain View company warns in particular that “separating Chrome or Android would destroy them”, after having invested billions of dollars in both, adding that few companies would have the capacity or the incentive to maintain these services open source or to invest in it. on the same level as Google.
“Make no mistake: separating them would change their economic models, would increase the cost of devices and would weaken Android and Google Play in their strong competition with the iPhone and Apple’s App Store,” Mulholland argued.
