Will the Justice Department break up Google?
This week, multiple outlets are reporting that the Department of Justice is considering asking for a break up of Google, which comes after an Aug. 5 court ruling that the company has a monopoly in online search. A break up could be one of several ways forward, though it’s a pretty uncommon one.
One of Google’s rivals, DuckDuckGo, is using this moment to speak out about what it wants to see change.
It’s been hard for the company to compete with Google, because it’s often the default search engine, said Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo’s senior vice president for public affairs.
“It has led to the market being pretty much frozen,” he said.
To thaw that market — and make online search more competitive — DuckDuckGo is advocating for a slew of things, which includes asking that Google be prohibited from paying companies to be the default.
It says Google also shouldn’t be allowed to give preference to its own search engine on Chrome, its browser, or Android, its mobile operating system.
That’s where a breakup might be useful, Bazbaz said: “Potentially spinning off Chrome and Android into separate companies could be ways to do that effectively.”
Court-enforced breakups like this are pretty rare, points out Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor of antitrust law at Vanderbilt.
“You know, courts don’t like to play CEO,” she said.
A breakup requires a lot of oversight and expertise about how a company works, she added. But there are other options, like requiring a kind of choice screen.
“Where we’re asked every time we set up a new phone or something, what do we want to be our search engine?” said Allensworth.
A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that it’s assessing the next steps and that no decisions have been made yet. Google didn’t respond to a request for comment.
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