Google faces trial in US bid to end search monopoly

By Jody Godoy

(Reuters) -Alphabet’s Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) faces a historic trial on Monday as U.S. antitrust enforcers in Washington seek to force the tech giant to sell off its Chrome browser as part of a bid to restore competition to the market for online search engines.

The outcome of the trial could fundamentally reshape the internet by unseating Google as the go-to portal for information online. The U.S. Department of Justice hopes it will prevent Google’s dominance from extending to artificial intelligence.

DOJ attorney David Dahlquist said during his opening statement that DOJ officials were present in the courtroom to show that the case, started under Trump and carried forward under Biden, has "the full support of the DOJ both past and present."

Google plans to appeal the final ruling in the case.

"When it comes to antitrust remedies, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that ’caution is key.’ DOJ’s proposal throws that caution to the wind," Google executive Lee-Anne Mulholland said in a blog post on Sunday.

Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater rejected that assessment in remarks outside the courthouse on Monday morning.

"You know what is irresponsible? Leaving Google’s monopoly abuse unaddressed," she said.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta is overseeing the three-week trial.

The U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of 38 state attorneys general have proposed far-reaching measures designed to quickly open the search market and give new competitors a leg up.

Their proposals include ending exclusive agreements in which Google pays billions of dollars annually to Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and other device vendors to make Google the default search engine on their tablets and smartphones.

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Google would also have to license search results to competitors, among other requirements. And it would be made to sell its Android mobile operating system if other remedies fail to restore competition.

Prosecutors have said they expect testimony about how Google’s agreements to be the default search engine on mobile devices have hampered distribution efforts by artificial intelligence companies. Witnesses from Perplexity AI and OpenAI are expected to take the stand.

Google sees the proposals as extreme, and said the court should stick to limiting the terms of its default agreements.

The $1.9 trillion tech company has been subsidizing browser makers such as Mozilla by paying to remain the default search engine. Cutting off that financial support could threaten their existence, Google says. And ending payments to device makers would raise the cost of smartphones, the company claims.

Google plans to call witnesses from Mozilla, Verizon (NYSE:VZ) and Apple, which launched a failed bid to intervene in the case.

Few potential buyers of Chrome have the same incentive as Google to maintain the free open-source code that underpins it, and which others including Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) use as a basis for their own browsers, the company says.

The trial comes on the heels of a win for the DOJ in a Virginia court on Thursday where a judge ruled in a separate antitrust case that Google maintains an illegal monopoly in advertising technology.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) is currently facing its own antitrust trial over the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

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