Abyel Salter, the American Assistant Prosecutor of the Anti -Monopathy Department, speaks to media outlets outside the Federal Court in Washington, the United States, on Monday, April 21, 2025. Google will retreat against the Ministry of Justice and dozens of state lawyers in the Washington Court Hall regarding the changes that the judge will require to prevent the company from displacing online marketing.
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Nearly a year ago, the American boycott judge, Amit Mihat, ruled that Google had to have Illegally act to maintain a monopoly In the search engine market.
It was a decision that sent shock waves across the Silicon Valley and Washington.
Now, Google’s lawyers and the Ministry of Justice are Facing again In the E. Barrett Prettyman United Stats in Washington, DC, this time to determine the sanctions that Miha will replace against the company of approximately trillion dollars.
Over the next few weeks, both sides will provide evidence and are expected to contact a group of witnesses, including the main technology industry players. This includes the CEO of Google Sundar Pichai and Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of Duckduckingggo, as well as the first vice president of Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, Chatgpt and Google, according to court documents – although this collection may change.
Google confirms that it will resume the Mihata decision once the treatments stage of the experiment are completed. The technology giant argues that the proposed treatments by the Ministry of Justice are dangerous and “unprecedented” and will harm American consumers, economics, technical leadership and innovation. On Sunday, tonight, before the session started, Google issued A long public blog post The saying of “swift therapy proposals” is not harmful and harmful. “
In response, he answered on Monday morning while standing out of the court, Jill Slater, Assistant Attorney of the Ministry of Justice for the Anti -monopoly decision, “You know what is the risk?
Join other lawyers for the government who read the data about an hour ago before the procedures began. They did not take questions from the collected media.
Inside the courtroom, sitting are full of lawyers from the Ministry of Justice and Google Set elbow to the elbow with the start of the procedures.
David Dackestest, deputy director of the Civil litigation department at the Ministry of Justice at the Ministry of Justice, spoke about the government in the opening data. In a presentation for about 45 minutes, put a list of aggressive demands that the government wants to see Google’s implementation.
The Ministry of Justice calls on the company to get rid of Chrome, its web browser, and end the exclusive distribution agreements with phone makers such as Apple and Samsung, through which it pushed Google to create its search engine as a virtual browser on their phones. Dackest said on Monday that the Ministry of Justice also calls on Judge Mihata to prevent Google from creating exclusive distribution agreements similar to programs and applications, such as Gemini Chatbot.
“We are not here for wild victory. We are here to restore competition,” said Dackestist.
This is a reflection point. The court asked: Does the United States allow allowing Google or the monopolist, control the search market or allowing the competition to the masters?
The beginning of the end of the technology love relationship
The legal battle began in 2020, when the Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit against a monopoly against Google.
The essence of the government’s argument is that Google has an unfair control over a huge market share in the United States, which is the regimen of evaluation 1 trillion dollars. the The original lawsuit of the Ministry of JusticeIt was presented alongside 11 state lawyers, that the company assumes billions of dollars with Apple and Samsung to ensure that its search engine is virtual on web browsers for their phones. The Ministry of Justice said that these agreements are effectively jam. Google denied this.
This condition was distinguished by the beginning of the end From the long love relationship Between the world of technology and Washington for many years, the technology industry has expanded with a little organizational control. But major technology players Deadand Amazon and apple They are now facing federal lawsuits.
In the same court where the Google Remedy trial plays, Meta is currently facing its monopoly control status It was presented by the Federal Trade Agreement. The agency says that Mita has misused her authority and behaved as a monopoly by obtaining competitors to defeat them as competitors.
This is not the only lawsuit of the government against Google: they filed another in 2023 last week, A different federal judge spent Google’s control over online ads and advertising markets that violate anti -monopoly laws.
What were the arguments of the Ministry of Justice?
The most powerful government’s request is for Judge Mihata to order the technology company to sell its famous browser in Chrome.
Dahlquist said that Chrome is an important gateway to searching for users and billions of dollars in the revenue of Google. It is the most popular search engine in the world. He said that forcing Google to sell this piece of the company “allow competitors to compete.” It was called “the reality of the market” that the ownership of Google of Chromium affects the emergence of new competitive alternatives, and that this is a violation of federal monopoly laws.
Google, for its part, rejected this proposal high.
The Ministry of Justice also requests that Google stop making monthly payments for an external party for phone makers to ensure that its browser is the default option on those phones.
Dackest said that Google suggested deleting the word “exclusive” in its Apple agreements and other companies with any other browser distribution agreements. “This is not enough,” he said, on the pretext that Google can still remove other companies using their current basic agreements and their ability to provide large sums of phone makers.
The government wants to take a step forward to ensure that any treatment prevents Google from creating exclusive agreements similar to its artificial intelligence products, such as Gemini. Dackest said that the rise of Google AI products can open another field that the company can dominate if it is allowed to continue using exclusive contracts – and they want to prevent this.
How did Google respond?
Google has long pledged to appeal, but they must first perform this experimental process of treatment.
The company has claimed over the past four years that it has never been spent as a monopoly and that the changes, even small, are not necessary. The company’s leaders said that its search product is superior to competitors – and for this reason this industry dominates.
John E. GOOGLE Lawyer, in opening holes that the list of subsequent treatments in this case is just a “rival list for competitors”, and that it will enable them to obtain resources that took on Google contracts to develop.
He said that the proposals of the Ministry of Justice aim to “support individual competitors.”
Google looks at the government’s demands to get rid of Chrome as its most prominent request and “the most extreme”. The leaders of the company said that the Chrome division will break a greatly common feature – a statement of repeat of Schmidlein in the court. He said that Google could not strip it from the Chrome browser without damaging other Google products, such as the Chrome operating system and Chromebook.
In addressing the efforts of the Ministry of Justice to prevent Google from including Gemini in the exclusive distribution agreements in the future, Schmidlein said that Gemini was not the subject of the anti -monopoly issue and that the company does not Replace the products of artificial intelligence.
Schmidlin pointed out the success of Chatbots from competitors, such as ChatgptMetai, and GROK, as evidence that competition inside this space is healthy and varied. “The idea that ChatGPT cannot get a ridiculous distribution. They have more distribution than anyone else,” he said.
Why is this case a big deal?
This is the largest issue of combating monopoly in the government for decades.
“This condition is a very big problem. It is difficult to exaggerate it,” she said. “It is at least a big deal like the Microsoft case, which is the last major case to combat monopoly that we had. It was 25 years ago.”
The Microsoft case, which was presented in 1998, revolves around the assembly of the company that it Browser, Internet Explorer, with its Windows operating system. This almost led to the division of the company into two parts – but Microsoft and Doj settled.
Allensworth added that it is also similar to cases such as the Standard Oil case in the 1906 Justice Ministry, which is widely considered the first major monopoly case. Ultimately, a federal court found that the oil group owned by John de Rockefeller had illegally monopolized the American refining industry. Standard Oil was ordered to divide about 40 different companies as a result.
Alinsworth said the result of this part of the Google experience is difficult to predict. But this is what Google is stripped of Chrome is not possible.
Google is a financial supporter of NPR.