DOJ Targets Google, Urges Judge To Force Sale
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Google, which controls about 90% of the global search market, has used illegal agreements to sideline its rivals and harmed consumers and advertisers in the process. A trial last year, focused just on liability, revealed that Google has paid Apple more than $20 billion a year for Google’s search engine to be the default on Apple’s Safari web browser.”
Now, in their arguments to the court, the DOJ is urging U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta — who previously stated that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted like one” while ruling that the company had illegally preserved its search engine monopoly — to force Google to end its monopoly. The arguments in the case to force Google to sell Chrome were made by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust Gail Slater, and DOJ official David Dahlquist.
“President Trump took the first big step in 2020 when his Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google to challenge its dominance over internet search,” Blanche told the judge. “Today, as the remedies phase of that case begins, President Trump’s Justice Department will finish the job.”
“As a monopolist, Google uses its market power against the American people,” Blanche added. “It has control of an extraordinary amount of data about ordinary Americans. Google has deplatformed conservative speech and has put its thumb on the scale politically for years. All of this behavior is downstream from Google’s monopoly power over internet search. This antitrust case addresses that monopoly power. The Department has asked the court to impose remedies that will ensure Google can never again wield such dominance over internet search.”
“This case was filed during President Trump’s first term and litigated across three administrations,” Slater noted. “It has unified our nation. Forty-nine states, two territories and the District of Columbia have all joined the Department of Justice in prosecuting Google here. And for good reason. Each generation has called for the DOJ to challenge a behemoth that crushed competition. In decades past, it was Standard Oil and AT&T. Today’s behemoth is Google. It is a gatekeeper for our commerce and our information. It is so ubiquitous and so powerful that it interacts with millions of Americans, billions of times per day. Fortunately, DOJ’s Antitrust Division exists for cases just like this one.”
“We’re at an inflection point,” Dahlquist told the judge. “This court has an opportunity to remedy a monopoly that has controlled the internet for today’s generation and restore competition for decades to come.”
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