At the beginning of the year, the court recognized Google as a monopolist in search and since then, regulators have been thinking about how to overcome the company’s anticompetitive practices.
According to Bloomberg, The US Department of Justice proposed to the court to force Google to sell Chrome, the world’s most popular browser. According to regulators, the integration of Google Search and Chrome is one of the factors that limit competition.
Among other proposals — separation of the Android operating system from Search and the Google Play Store. Both are installed on Android devices by default, but in the second case it is unclear how the system will work, since Google Play is an Android app store (the Ministry of Justice previously considered the possibility of a full sale of Android, but abandoned the idea).
Similarly, the Ministry of Justice will recommend that the court order Google to license data and combine Google search results without restrictions. Bloomberg suggests that this allows competing search engines and AI startups to create their own search indexes. Moreover, the tech giant will be forced to provide more data to advertisers, and they will be able to better control where their ads will be displayed.
Google may also be banned from entering into exclusive agreements similar to the one with Apple, which stipulated that the company’s search engine would become standard for Safari (for this, the search giant paid about $20 billion in 2022).
Google is appealing the court’s decision on monopoly status, while the judge in charge of the case has scheduled a two-week hearing for April 2025 — to discuss what changes Google should make to eliminate anticompetitive behavior in search. The final decision is due in August 2025.