Can Google’s search dominance be broken by its break-up?

The US Department of Justice is considering asking a US Federal Court judge to break up Google after the judge earlier this year found the tech giant had breached antitrust laws.

However, that may be easier said than done.

In August, judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google had spent tens of billions of dollars on exclusivity deals to maintain an illegal dominance of online search. He branded Google, which has a market share of more than 90 per cent in search, a “monopolist”.

Google’s quarterly trend results show a huge bump in interest in AI.Credit: iStock

He said the various agreements Google had with telecommunications companies, device manufacturers (especially Apple), and browser developers enabled it to maintain its dominance in search.

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice made a 32-page filing with the court outlining its proposed remedies, saying it was considering “behavioural and structural remedies” that would prevent Google from using products such as its Chrome browser, the Google Play app store or the Android operating system to give it an advantage over competitors or potential new entrants to the search market.

“For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little to no incentive to compete for users,” the DoJ wrote.

“Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.”

Among the remedies the DoJ says it is considering asking for is the break-up of the $US2 trillion ($3 trillion) mega-tech, or a spin-off of its Chrome browser or Android operating system.

Banning exclusive contracts like the $US20 billion or more a year that Google pays Apple to be its default search engine, forcing Google to share the vast hoard of data it collects and stores for its search and advertising platforms – or prohibiting its use of that data if it is unable to share it – are other potential remedies.

Generative artificial intelligence has the potential to radically change the search market. It is a threat to Google’s dominance.

The DoJ doesn’t, however, appear to be asking the judge to stop Google, which is investing tens of billions of dollars into its own AI models, from building its own AI search capabilities. It wants websites to have the option to opt out of being used to train Google’s models or being used in its AI-produced summaries.

‘Fully remedying these harms requires not only ending Google’s control of distribution today, but also ensuring Google cannot control the distribution of tomorrow.’

US Department of Justice

The Google case is one of an array of antitrust cases brought by the DoJ against the dominant tech companies – another major case against Google alleging it monopolises key digital advertising technologies is winding its way through the US courts. And it’s probably the biggest antitrust case since Microsoft was accused of illegally monopolising the web browser market in 1998. Microsoft initially lost the case in 2000, but had the judgment overturned on appeal.

Yet another case against Google was concluded on Monday, with a judge ordering Google to stop paying manufacturers to pre-install its app store on their devices and forcing developers to use its in-app billing services.

The US District Court judge in the case, brought by “Fortnite” developer Epic Games, is seeking to make it possible for mobile app store developers to compete more effectively on devices using Google’s Android software.

The big US tech companies also face another barrage of actions in Europe, where the European Commission is aggressively wielding new powers to target anti-competitive behaviour handed to it by the Digital Services and Digital Markets Acts.

Like the DoJ, it has also targeted Google’s “adtech stack,” arguing that it restricts competitors’ access to user data for online advertising while exploiting that data for its services.

The US justice system moves slowly. The DoJ launched its action against Google four years ago, Justice Mehta will hold hearings over the final remedy requests in April next year, and he doesn’t plan to hand down his decision until August 2025.

With Google saying it will appeal Mehta’s decision as far as the US Supreme Court, it will be years before an outcome.

In the meantime, the race to develop generative AI continues to intensify and, while Google may have some advantages, given the vast amounts of data it collects across its platforms, there is no certainty that it can entrench its current dominance of search.

Technology evolves rapidly – two years ago, few outside the sector had even heard of ChatGPT – and it is conceivable that by the time the case is finally resolved the online search and advertising markets could look radically different.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which had a similar market share of web browsing in the early 2000s as Google has today in search, was at the heart of the case against it. Long relegated to the sidelines – by Google’s Chrome in particular – it was “retired” a couple of years ago.

In the near term, breaking up Google, restricting its ability to pay other tech companies to make its search engine their default, or opening up access for competitors to its data, may not produce the effects the DoJ is seeking.

In Europe, the European Commission’s Digital Markets Act has mandated that device manufacturers using Google’s Android operating system offer their users a choice of search engine and prohibits any self-preferencing of Google’s own services in search results.

Google still has a European market share in search above 90 per cent. In the digital world, network effects are powerful and entrench dominance, at least until something different and better comes along.

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