Google back in court to fight search monopoly case

The US would force Google to share the data underpinning its search results, Mr Schmidtlein said, which risks harming user privacy and unfairly penalises Google

Mon, 21 Apr, 2025 - 20:34

The US government hasn’t broken up a company since AT&T in 1982. Now, it’s trying to persuade a judge to make Alphabet’s Google next.

Yesterday, Google began squaring off against the US justice department and dozens of state attorneys general in a Washington courtroom over what changes US district judge Amit Mehta will order to prevent the company from monopolising the online search market.

The government wants Google to sell its Chrome browser, license search data to competitors, and stop paying for exclusive positions on other services and devices, among other proposed changes.

Google says the government’s proposal would hurt consumers by breaking a range of products that people use every day and dent US technological leadership.

Google’s lawyer John Schmidtlein called the justice department’s proposals “extreme remedies” that would “reward competitors with advantages they never would have earned in the market”.

The US would force Google to share the data underpinning its search results, Mr Schmidtlein said, which risks harming user privacy and unfairly penalises Google.

Data collection

He suggested the judge focus on the preferential contracts with device makers.

However, Judge Mehta asked whether the increased amount of data Google collected was because of its monopoly.

There is some relationship between data and search quality

“How then does the market look any different unless there’s a remedy that addresses the gap in data?” he said.

Mr Schmidtlein said that the justice department hasn’t shown how much data Google garnered from its illegal monopoly versus what it gained from being the best search engine.

“Google won its place in the market fair and square,” he said. The final decision will be up to Judge Mehta, who found last August that Google has an illegal monopoly in internet search.

The judge will hear testimony from both sides during a trial focused on how to remedy the harm caused by Google’s dominance, and said his decision will likely come by August.