In a sign that President Trump is pursuing the direction of the Biden administration in the renovation of Google, the Justice Department on Friday reiterated its request for a court to disrupt the search giant.
The request followed a historic ruling last year by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court for Colombia district that revealed that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in the Internet searching online browsers and smartphone manufacturers to present his search engine. The judge is scheduled to hear arguments for the solutions proposed by both Government and Google in April.
According to Biden administration last year, the Justice Department asked Judge Mehta in a preliminary appearance to force Google to sell his well -known internet browser, Chrome, among other legal remedies. The department’s lawyers on Friday repeated that request, which can reshape online competition.
“Google’s illegal behavior has created an economic goliath, one that destroys the market to ensure that – no matter what happens – Google always wins,” the government said in its Friday. “The American people are thus forced to accept the unsparing and change demands, the ideological preferences of an economic leviathan in exchange for a search engine that the public can enjoy.”
The Department of Justice Department to stay on its comprehensive proposal to radically change the company of $ 2 trillion is one of the first signals from the new administration on how it can approach technology regulation. Requests, the most significant remedies proposed in a case of technology monopoly as the Department of Justice asked Microsoft to disrupt in 2000, can expect how Mr. Trump’s name will handle other antitrust cases that challenge the predominance of technological behemoths.
The Department of Justice has also sued Google for its predominance in advertising technology, a case pending a ruling, as well as Apple on claims that its strongly woven system of equipment and software makes it challenging for customers to leave. A case of the Federal Commission on Meta on claims that Meta destroyed competition when purchased Instagram and WhatsApp is scheduled to go to trial in April. The agency has also sued Amazon, accusing him of illegal protection of a monopoly on retail online.
The technology industry is looking closely at Mr. Trump’s elections to lead those agencies while trying to determine its approach to adjustment. Antitrust cases against technology giants stem from investigations that began during Mr. Trump’s first term.
Andrew Ferguson, the new chairman of FTC, has expressed concern about the power of technology giants as a goalkeeper for online discourse. Gail Slater, Mr Trump’s candidate to lead the division of the Department of Justice, said hearing her confirmation in the Senate that she was worried that someone “could disappear from the internet quite easily when there are only two news platforms, for example, to the American people.”
Technology leaders have visited Mar-A-Lago in recent months to judge the president’s favor and donated millions of dollars to Mr. Trump’s inauguration. The leading leaders including Apple’s Tim Cook, Google Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg sat down after Mr. Trump during his inauguration.
The first major test of the Trump administration approach to concerns about the Big Tech power will be the way it goes on in Google’s search issue.
During a 10-week trial in 2023, the government said Google closed rivals by signing deals with Apple, Mozilla, Samsung and others to automatically appear as the search engine when users opened a new smartphone or file in an online browser. Google paid $ 26.3 billion for those arrangements in 2021, according to evidence presented in court.
Google argued that his deals had not violated the law, and that users chose his search engine because it was better in finding information than rivals like Bing or Duckduckgo of Microsoft, who claims to provide its users more intimacy than search engines collecting more information to target users with advertising.
After Judge Mehta ruled in August that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly, the Department of Justice proposed last year for the company to be forced to sell Chrome. He also suggested at a time when an Android sale, Google’s smartphone operating system, unless Google changed some of his policies.
The government urged the court to stop Google from entering the agreement paid by Apple, Mozilla and smartphone manufacturers to be the predetermined search engine on smartphones and browsers. The company should also allow rival search engines to display Google results and access its data for a decade, the government said in its submission at the time.
Google had asked Judge Mehta to take a closer approach. She demanded that she continue to be allowed to pay other companies to give the prime minister of the search engine in the internet browsers and smartphones. But she said those deals should be less restrictive than in the past and allow other search engines to compete for the main placement in phones and browsers. Moreover, browse manufacturers like Apple and Mozilla should be allowed to change their predetermined search engines at least every 12 months, the company said.
Judge Mehta is planned next month to chair a nearly two-week hearing to determine legal remedies in this case, which will show evidence and arguments from lawyers for both parties.