The Department of Justice will ask a federal judge Wednesday to consider breaking up Google, months after the technology giant was found to have illegally monopolized the online search market by spending billions of dollars on deals with manufacturers that required it to be their default search engine. Bloomberg News reported that the department will file a petition asking Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia to consider forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser or Android mobile operating system and to target default web browser contracts and data-sharing agreements. Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president of Google’s regulatory affairs, said the Justice Department is pushing a “radical agenda that goes far beyond legal issues in this case.” Government intervention, she said, would “harm customers, developers and American technological leadership.
” The high-stakes showdown could reshape the online search market and the emerging artificial intelligence industry. It has been likened to Washington’s unsuccessful 2001 antitrust case to split up Microsoft Corp. A Google dismemberment would mark the biggest forced breakup of a massive company on antitrust grounds since AT&T in the 1980s.
Chrome is the world’s most widely used web browser. In August, Judge Mehta held that Google had gone too far in preserving its monopoly on the search engine market. He said the billions of dollars the company funneled into agreements to ensure its sear.