The Justice Department sued Google for allegedly using its dominance to control the search engine market. In August, a federal judge ruled in favor of the government and now must decide how to sanction the company.
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Leon Neal/Getty Images Europe
The Department of Justice is proposing a series of sanctions against Google to ensure that it can no longer monopolize the search engine market. In a filing late Tuesday night, the government laid out its framework for reining in the tech giant.
Proposals include possibly putting an end to exclusive agreements Google has with companies like Apple and Samsung, and prohibiting certain kinds of data tracking. The government wrote that it’s considering “behavioral and structural” remedies that would ensure Google couldn’t use its Chrome browser or Android phone in a way that advantages its search engine, but didn’t outline what the structural remedies would be.
“Google’s anticompetitive conduct resulted in interlocking and pernicious harms,” reads the filing. The markets Google controls, it continues, “are indispensable to the lives of all Americans, whether as individuals or as business owners, and the importance of effectively unfettering these markets and restoring competition cannot be overstated.”
The 32-page filing follows federal Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling in August that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly on the search engine market. That ruling was the culmination of an antitrust lawsuit that the Justice Department filed against Google in 2020, which was joined by 38 state attorneys…