Google and the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) will make their closing arguments tomorrow in the Google Search remedies trial. Judicial adoption of the DOJ’s recommendations to “break up” Google, stemming from this and another DOJ lawsuit, could seriously undermine American innovation and competitiveness and harm, not help, American consumers.
Background
The DOJ sued Google in October 2020 for maintaining an illegal monopoly in internet-search and search-advertising markets in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The department’s suit alleged that Google had “us[ed] [its] monopoly profits to buy preferential treatment for its search engine on devices, web browsers, and other search access points, creating a continuous and self-reinforcing cycle of monopolization.”
The suit focused on Google’s exclusivity agreements, which involved the company’s search-related payments to web browsers and to such device manufacturers as Apple. The agreements forbade preinstallation of any competing search service, but did not in any way prevent consumers from accessing other internet-search engines.
Following a lengthy trial, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued an August 2024 opinion holding that Google’s exclusivity agreements had illegally monopolized markets for “internet searches” and for “general search text advertising.” Having found Google liable, the judge subsequently convened a separate trial to decide upon an appropriate remedy for Google’s antitrust violation.
The DOJ wants the court to ban Google’s exclusivity agreements and to inform the government prior to making any investments related to artificial intelligence. The DOJ also recommended “structural remedies” that would effectively “break up” the existing Google platform. These include:
- Google’s divestiture of its Chrome browser, a “critical distribution point,” to shield against self-preferencing”; and
- Google’s divestiture of Android, “if proposed remedies are not effective in preventing Google from improperly leveraging its control of Android to its advantage or ‘if Google attempts to circumvent’ remedies.”
Furthermore, the DOJ wants a government-appointed remedies-oversight committee established to regulate the development and design of Google’s products.
Implications of the Proposed Remedies
DOJ’s proposed remedies go far beyond eliminating Google’s contractual payments to gain default status for its search engine. They involve micromanagement of Google’s commercial conduct, including conduct that was not found to be anticompetitive. As such, they could be in tension with Judge Mehta’s factual finding that Google acted innovatively and efficiently in developing and improving its search engine. Taking note of this finding, Judge Mehta or an appeals court could choose to reject non-contractual payments-related remedies as unjustified interference in Google’s normal business activities.
Trial or appeals judges could also find powerful case-law support for rejecting remedies that go beyond undoing the Google payments contracts. Most notable is the highly influential appeals-court decision in the landmark 2001 Microsoft monopolization case. The Microsoft appeals panel overturned the trial court’s order to break up the company. It stressed that the trial court had not determined that a breakup was needed to rectify the anticompetitive conduct that had been shown. A similar finding could be justified in the Google matter.
Moreover, Google judges may take note of scholarship focusing on why firm-breakup remedies have been disfavored in monopolization cases. As Herbert Hovenkamp has explained: “the antitrust record of monopoly breakup decrees has not been pretty.”
In addition, and very significantly, the expansive nature of the DOJ’s proposed remedies raises major economic-policy concerns. Google disputes Judge Mehta’s finding of liability (which it likely will appeal), and has also voiced specific objections to the DOJ remedies on economic grounds, asserting that:
- The DOJ’s proposal would force browsers and mobile devices to default to search services like Microsoft’s Bing, making it harder to access Google.
- The proposal to prevent Google from competing for the right to distribute Google Search would raise prices and slow innovation.
- The proposal would force Google to share users’ most sensitive and private search queries with companies the users may never have heard of, jeopardizing their privacy and security.
- The proposal to split off Chrome and Android, which the company built at great cost over many years, and to make available for free would break those platforms, hurt businesses built on them, and undermine security.
- The DOJ’s proposal would also hamstring how the firm develops AI, and having a government-appointed committee regulate the design and development of Google’s products would hamper American innovation at a time of fierce international competition with China.
The final concern, about hamstringing innovation by one of America’s “crown jewel” tech firms during a period of fierce international competition, has not been lost on President Donald Trump. According to Techzine, Trump stated in October 2024 that “China is afraid of Google,” and further indicated “that a breakup would possibly mean the end of the company, which would no longer act as a counterweight to China.” Reuters had a similar report. The proposed DOJ remedies, however, do not appear to reflect these considerations.
More Antitrust Problems for Google
What’s more, Google faces additional serious U.S. antitrust problems. In April 2025, in a separate DOJ antitrust prosecution, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema held that Google had illegally monopolized open-web advertising markets. The remedies hearing in that matter may consider divestiture of another key asset: Google Ad Manager. Such a divestiture, added to the possible divestiture of Google Chrome and Android, could deal a crippling blow to Google’s integrated system and revenue-generation model.
A recent Reason magazine article highlighted the combined impact of the two Google suits:
The proposed remedies in both cases threaten the company’s main source of revenue: Google Services, including Google Ads and products like Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube, which Google’s present business model offers to users for free. Declaring this model and its associated practices illegal could have unintended consequences for consumers.
Implementing both sets of remedies could impose multiple harms on Google and its consumer and business users, according to tech-policy scholars:
- “Consumers may ‘encounter more friction to select default browsers or search options to reach the products they want.’”
- “The remedies may also create fewer options and ‘higher cost or less successful advertising reach particularly for small businesses.’”
- “Adding extra middlemen in the ad stack may well increase costs for advertisers, which would seem to disproportionally harm smaller ad buyers.”
- Google’s services and ability to innovate (particularly in AI) and compete effectively could be weakened, due to financial harm and reduced access to data.
The Road Forward
The two Google federal trial judges (and, if necessary, appeals-court judges) may want to weigh the potential negative economic implications of far-reaching “remedies” that could impose higher costs on the economy than the benefits of reduced Google monopoly power.
Antitrust remedies directed at Google (and potentially at other large U.S. digital platforms in the future) will have large domestic and international policy implications, potentially bearing on American competitiveness and global economic leadership.
The Trump administration DOJ may wish to consider whether these implications merit a change of direction in recommended Google remedies.
