Should Google be broken up? In any case, this is what the American Department of Justice suggests – and hopes. This ministry in fact proposed, Wednesday October 9, in a long document of thirty-two pages, sanctions which could shatter the empire of the digital giant, still the undisputed leader in online search, with 90% market share. . “We are considering behavioral and structural remedies that would prevent Google from using its products like Chrome, Google Play and Android to advantage its search engine”, he wrote to Washington federal judge Amit Mehta.
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In antitrust jargon, the message is clear: Google should be forced to separate, or even sell, its Internet browser, its mobile application store or its smartphone environment in order to stop favoring its search engine as service by default and, therefore, to maintain its quasi-monopoly unduly, according to the reasoning of the justice department.
The prosecution also plans to force Google to share with its competitors the data it collects on Internet users’ searches – an important trove of information that can be used to sell interest-targeted advertisements. The document finally mentions the idea of restricting the possibility for Google to train its artificial intelligence (AI) models on search data and user queries from its engine.
“Risk on American innovation”
Such an attack on the kingdom of Google is unprecedented. She draws a picture that would change the face of the giant with 307 billion dollars in turnover (280 billion euros), more than half of which in online search, and 73 billion dollars in net profit in 2023 The specter of dismantling invoked by the American ministry recalls historic cases of antitrust: the separation of the telecoms juggernaut AT&T, in 1984, or the conviction of Microsoft for having favored its Explorer browser over its Windows environment, in 1999.
Moreover, sensing the threat, Google strongly denounced proposals deemed «radicals» and susceptible “to have unintended consequences for consumers, businesses and the competitiveness of the United States”. “Separating Chrome or Android would break them” et “would increase the price of smartphones and tablets”, while weakening competition against the world of iPhones, the company argued in a press release. “Forcing Google to share your search queries, clicks and results pages would endanger your privacy and security”she also argues. Limit its development of artificial intelligence “would risk hampering American innovation at a critical time.”
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