The US Department of Justice (DoJ) argued Google must divest its Chrome web browser to end the company’s anti-competitive conduct in search, but offered potential behavioural remedies which would allow it to hang onto the Android mobile OS.  

In a court filing, the authority proposed remedies to issues raised in a court case Google lost in August, when the tech giant was found to be running a monopoly in online search.

Many of the points in its proposal put forward yesterday (20 November) were highlighted as under consideration in a filing last month.

The DoJ and several US states backing the action noted: “Restoring competition to the markets for general search and search text advertising as they exist today will require reactivating the competitive process that Google has long stifled.”

“Google’s ownership and control of Chrome and Android, key methods for the distribution of search engines to consumers, poses a significant challenge to effectuate a remedy” which frees the market and is unlikely to result in future issues.

While the only resolution put on the table for Chrome was it being completely divested, the authority offered a way for the company to retain Android given “such divestiture may draw significant objections from Google or other market participants”.

Although stating the easiest way to solve issues related to the operating system was for Google to offload it, a series of behavioural remedies designed to “blunt” the tech giant’s ability to favour its own search on mobile devices was offered.

Adherence to the rules agreed to for this would need to be overseen by authorities, it argued.

Google would also be prevented from “owning or acquiring any interests in search rivals, potential entrants” and companies competing in AI.

Radical
Predictably, the tech giant responded by dismissing the proposals as “extreme” measures which would lead to “unprecedented government overreach”.  

It stated the “DoJ chose to push a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership”.

The “DoJ’s wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court’s decision”.

Google plans to file its own proposal to the court next month and provide broader arguments in a court case scheduled to take place in 2025.