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Google is confronting an existential threat as the U.S. government tries to break up the company as punishment for turning its revolutionary search engine into an illegal monopoly.
The drama began to unfold Monday in a Washington courtroom as three weeks of hearings kicked off to determine how the company should be penalized for operating a monopoly in search. In its opening arguments, federal antitrust enforcers also urged the court to impose forward-looking remedies to prevent Google from using artificial intelligence to further its dominance.
“This is a moment in time, we’re at an inflection point, will we abandon the search market and surrender them to control of the monopolists or will we let competition prevail and give choice to future generations,” said Justice Department attorney David Dahlquist.
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The proceedings, known in legal parlance as a “remedy hearing,” are set to feature a parade of witnesses that includes Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal judge to order a radical shake-up that would ban Google from striking the multibillion dollar deals with Apple and other tech companies that shield its search engine from competition, share its repository of valuable user data with rivals and force a sale of its popular Chrome browser.
Google’s attorney, John Schmidtlein, said in his opening statement that the court should take a much lighter touch. He said the government’s heavy-handed proposed remedies wouldn’t boost competition but instead unfairly reward lesser rivals with inferior technology.
“Google won its place in the market fair and square,” Schmidtlein said.
The moment of reckoning comes four-and-a-half-years after the Justice Department filed a landmark lawsuit alleging Google’s search engine had been abusing its power as the internet’s main gateway to stifle competition and innovation for more than a decade.
