WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust officials have formally asked a federal judge to force Alphabet Inc.'s Google to sell Chrome web browser with a view to ending the tech major's illegal monopoly in search.
The decision comes after a landmark ruling by District Judge Amit Mehta in August found that Google had violated US antitrust law by illegally monopolizing the search market.
If the judge agrees to the Justice Department proposal, Chrome browser could be sold for as much as $20 billion, Bloomberg reported.
In a filing with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, the DOJ officials submitted the Initial Proposed Final Judgment or PFJ, which said, 'The playing field is not level because of Google's conduct, and Google's quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired. The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages.'
The DOJ alleged that Google has manipulated its control of Chrome and Android to benefit itself, while sharing monopoly profits under conditions to induce third parties across the ecosystem to help Google maintain its monopolies.
As a remedy, the DOJ requires Google to divest Chrome, which will permanently stop its control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet. In addition, there are multiple provisions that will limit Google's distribution of general search services by contract with third-party devices and search access points.
Google is now being asked to syndicate its search results, ranking signals, and query understanding information in the U.S. to other rival search engines for ten years.
The DOJ lawyers also sought that the court ban agreements including Google's multi-year contracts making it the default search engine on the devices of Apple, Samsung and others. They are also seeking to impose a range of other restrictions that would, among other things, limit or prohibit pre-installation agreements, and other revenue-sharing arrangements related to search and search-related products, potentially with or without the use of a choice screen.
In early August, the Columbia District Court had ruled that Google has a monopoly in the general search services market and has used exclusive default search engine agreements to preserve its dominance, thereby suppressing competition.
Following a lengthy trial, the court then had found that 'Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly' over both the general search services and search text advertising markets.
A potential partial breakup of Google is expected to significantly reshape both the online search market and the rapidly developing AI industry.
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