In a sign that President Trump follows the management of the Biden administration at Reining in Google, the Ministry of Justice repeated his requirement on Friday that a court broke the search giant.
The request followed last year on a milestone ruling by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the American court for the District of Columbia who discovered that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search by paying web browsers and smartphone manufacturers to contain the search engine. The judge is planned to hear arguments about proposed solutions from both the government and Google in April.
According to the BIDEN administration last year, the Ministry of Justice and a group of States Judge Mehta asked in a provisional request to force Google to sell his popular web browser, Chrome, among other things. The lawyers of the Department repeated that requirement, who could reform the internet match.
“The illegal behavior of Google has created an economic Goliath, one that causes damage to the market to ensure that – whatever happens – Google always wins,” the government said in its Friday application. “The American people are therefore forced to accept the unbridled requirements and shifting, ideological preferences of an economic Leviathan in exchange for a search engine that the audience can enjoy.”
Google, which says that it is planning to appeal against the judge in the case, also submitted his own definitive proposal on Friday, so that it is maintained that the company does not have to change much to tackle the concerns of the judge.
The Ministry of Justice's decision to stick to its radical proposal to fundamentally change the company of $ 2 trillion company is one of the first signals from the new administration on how the technical regulation can approach. The requests, the most important remedies proposed in a technical monopolistic case since the Ministry of Justice to break Microsoft in 2000, could predict how Mr Trump's arranged will treat a series of other antitrust cases that dispute the dominance of technical colosses.
The Ministry of Justice has also charged Google due to its dominance in advertising technology, a case awaiting a statement, as well as Apple about claiming that the tightly knitted system of devices and software makes it a challenge for consumers to leave. A federal case of the trade committee against Meta, about claims that Meta has sniffed competition when the Instagram and WhatsApp bought, is planned to get to court in April. The agency has also sued Amazon and accuses the illegal protection of a monopoly in online retail.
The technical industry is closely monitored of the choices of Mr. Trump to lead those agencies while it tries to determine his approach to regulations. The antitrust cases against the technical giants stem from studies that started during the first term of Mr Trump.
Andrew Ferguson, the new chairman of the FTC, has expressed concern about the power of the technical giants as a gatekeeper for online discourse. Gail Slater, the nominee of Mr Trump to lead the antitrust department of the Ministry of Justice, said during her hearing of the Senate that she was worried that someone “can be disappeared fairly easily from the internet when there are only two platforms that offer news, for example to the American people.”
The application on Friday was signed by Omeed A. Assefi, which leads the antitrust department while Mrs. Slater is waiting for a senate voice about her nomination.
Tech managers have visited Mar-A-Lago in recent months to realize the president's benefit and donated millions of dollars to Mr Trump's inauguration. Chief Executives including Tim Cook from Apple, Sundar Pichai from Google and Mark Zuckerberg from Meta were behind Mr. Trump during his inauguration.
The first important test of the approach of the Trump administration about the power of Big Tech will be how it goes in the Google search case.
During a 10 -week trial period in 2023, the government said that Google Rivals has locked up deals with Apple, Mozilla, Samsung and others to automatically appear as a search engine when users opened a smartphone or new tab in a web browser. Google paid $ 26.3 billion for those schemes in 2021, according to evidence that was presented during the process.
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 such as Microsoft's Bing or Duckduckgo, who claims to offer users more privacy than search engines that collect more information to direct users with advertisements.
After judge Mehta ruled in August that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly, the Ministry of Justice suggested last year that the company was forced to sell Chrome.
The government asked the court to stop Google to enter into paid agreements with Apple, Mozilla and smartphone makers to be the standard search engine on smartphones and in browsers. The company must also allow competitive search engines to display the results of Google and to have access to its data for a decade, the government said at that time in its submission.
The government also said that Google, whose parent company is alphabet, should be forced to dispose of its interests in possible artificial intelligence products that can compete with searching, an attempt to prevent the company from dominating the budding technology.
The Ministry of Justice has changed that part of his request on Friday and said instead that Google must inform Federal and Government Officers before they continue investments in AI
The government also said that Google should make changes to the business practices of its Android smartphone operating system, which eliminates an option that could easily sell the company Android. If the market became not more competitive, the court could then order Google to sell Android, according to the new application.
Google had encouraged Judge Mehta to follow a narrower approach. It asked that it was still allowed to pay other companies to give his search engine Prime placement in web browsers and on smartphones. But it said that those similarities should be less restrictive than in the past and allow other search engines to compete for prime placement on telephones and browsers. In addition, browser manufacturers such as Apple and Mozilla must be able to change their standard search engines at least every 12 months, the company said.
On Friday, Google submitted an identical proposal to Judge Mehta. The government's proposals would harm 'America's consumers, economy and national security', a spokesperson for Google, Peter Schottenfels, added in a statement.
Judge Mehta is scheduled next month to preside a hearing of almost two weeks to determine remedies in the case that will contain witness and arguments of lawyers for both parties.
