Three and a half months ago, D.C. district Judge Amit Mehta found that Google broke antitrust law in monopolizing search and search advertising. In a tightly reasoned 277-page opinion, Mehta’s conclusion was that Google, by controlling the means of distribution of search engines through its ownership of Android and Chrome, as well as contracts with Apple, Samsung, Verizon, and other distributors, prevented rivals from getting access to search markets.
Mehta asked the government to propose a remedy
PROPOSAL
1) Allow New Entrants into the Market (Like Apple Search)
The heart of the monopolization issue at trial was that Google controlled the means of distribution for search, the shelf space if you will, and denied that to rivals. So the first request is to end that control at various distribution points.
The first of those chokepoints is Chrome, the Google-owned browser with a 67% market share that puts Google as default. The remedy mandates a sale of Chrome, a “break-up” of the company.
The second chokepoint is Android, the Google-owned mobile operating system inside hundreds of millions of phones. For that, Google can either sell Android, or it can submit to regulation to ensure that it doesn’t privilege its own products or degrade its rivals on its mobile operating system.
(2) Get Rid of Google’s Head Start in Search
But ending the bad behavior isn’t enough, because Google has a massive head start on any rival. It has more data, a powerful web index, and a wonderful brand. Since search is a scale product, and its rivals have no scale, their quality is also worse. So the second part of the remedy is to force Google to share its ill-gotten competitive advantages with other players in the market who had been thwarted by its bad behavior.
(3) Give Back Power to Publishers and Advertisers
Two of the victim groups in Google’s monopolization scheme were advertisers and publishers, who both got locked into the search giant’s ecosystem.
The idea is to let advertisers and publishers switch to rival ad platform.
(4) Ensure Artificial Intelligence Is Competitive
Finally, the Antitrust Division is seeking to ensure that Google can’t leverage its power in search to control the next great computing platform, which is AI-enabled search. Right now, there is potential competition, but Google has many levers to self-preference its own version of AI and kill potential rivals.