Court to Begin Considering Remedies in Google Search Antitrust Trial

Google will argue against a breakup of the company in a three-week trial starting Monday (April 21), while the Department of Justice and several state attorneys general will advocate for the remedies they have proposed for Google’s dominance in the search market.

The trial will be heard by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, the same judge who ruled in August that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in the search business with practices like paying Apple to make its search engine the default option on that company’s devices, Bloomberg reported Monday.

The changes proposed by the Justice Department include forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser, license search data to competitors and stop paying other companies to make its products the primary choice on their devices and services, according to the report.

Google argues that those moves would degrade the products consumers use every day and proposes instead that consumers be allowed to select their preferred browser and that Google then be able to split revenue with competitors, per the report.

Google Vice President, Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland wrote in a Sunday (April 20) blog post that the company will appeal the judge’s decision in the lawsuit, as it has long said it would, and that in the meantime the company will argue that the Justice Department’s proposals “go miles beyond the Court’s decision, and would hurt America’s consumers, economy and technological leadership.”

Mehta has said he will probably make his decision on the remedies by August, according to the Bloomberg report.

The verdict announced in August in the antitrust case marked a turning point in a legal battle that began when the Justice Department and 11 states filed their case in October 2020.

Immediately after the antitrust ruling, Google vowed that it would appeal the verdict, with Kent Walker, global affairs president at Google, telling PYMNTS that the decision “recognizes that Google offers the best search engine but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available.”

The verdict and the court’s delay in recommending remedies left observers speculating about the implications it would have on the connected economy.

The Justice Department officially recommended breaking up Google in November, saying in a court document that bold measures are necessary to restore competition.