The agreement of several billion dollars of Google with Apple at risk in the case of research

A federal judge will almost certainly certainly target the search engine of several billion dollars of Google with Apple and other companies as part of a means of remedying the monopoly of illegal online research of the technological empire, said antitrust experts.

On Monday, Google and the Ministry of Justice began an expected three -week legal battle in Washington, DC, which could lead to a massive upheaval in the technology giant of $ 1.8 Billion.

The American district judge Amit Mehta will finally determine the fate of Google following the so-called phase of remedies of the historic affair. Mehta judged in August that Google had violated the American antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly with its online research activity.

If the Doj is making its way, Google could be forced to sell its web browser Chrome Clé, to end its exclusive agreements with Apple, Mozilla, Samsung and others to make Google the default search engine on web browsers and smartphones and share search data with competitors.

The DoJ also wishes the court to force Google to break its Android mobile operating system if the research market does not undergo an increase in competition thanks to its proposed fixes.

Experts from the Antitrust law told Business Insider that Mehta would most likely rule for Google to end its agreements of several billion dollars with companies, including Apple, to be the default search engine on their devices and navigators.

The sale of chrome would be the “worst case”

“The judge will almost certainly order Google to stop paying the status of exclusive defect,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, professor of law at Vanderbilt University of Tennessee. “But I don’t think we know what exclusive default status means.”

Allesworth has described this to “launch” if the judge will force Google to give in Chrome. Demanding that Google sells Chrome would be the “worst case” for the company, said Allensworth.

“Disinstructing remedies are considered to be strong enough,” said Allensworth, adding that a rupture remedy “is not very closely linked to the behavior in this case.”

Anyway, Allensworth said that she thought there will be what is called a behavioral remedy for Google, which means that the judge will force Google to change the way he organizes his contracts with distributors like Apple.

“I think we just don’t know exactly how it will be designed,” she said.

In addition, Allensworth said it would be very unlikely that the judge ordered Google to give in both Chrome and Android.

In 2023, when the antitrust case was tried, it was revealed in court that in 2021, Google paid to companies more than $ 26 billion for research investment agreements. In 2022, Google paid Apple a huge $ 20 billion to secure itself as a default search engine on the company’s safari browser, the DOJ said.

At the trial, the judge made a “big deal” about the fact that Google had paid billions of Apple “, saying why they would do it if they did not lock the users,” said George Hay, professor at Cornell Law School and former chief economist of the antitrust division of the Ministry of Justice.

“He clearly believed that payment had this effect,” said Hay, adding that elimination of the agreement “is the easiest way to try to settle things.”

Doj, he said, will probably say that is not enough, however.

Nicholas Reese, auxiliary professor at New York University, said that Google’s exclusivity agreements with Apple and other companies “were close to the smoking pistol for the Doj and other criticisms because they would have shown naked attempts to control the market and neutralize competition”.

Reese noted that the Doj “had become great” in the remedies he was looking for in Google, but said that finding them all “would probably surprise” the government.

“I would stop saying that we will see each appeal sought by the DOJ ordered, but I think it will be important,” he said.

Hay told Bi as asking the judge as much as he did, the Doj “invites Google to confirm that something less draconian will work”.

“Google says of course that he wants almost no remedy,” he said.

The judge is expected to make his appeal decision by the end of the summer. Google promised to appeal the decision of Mehta in which he declared the giant of monopoly technology. It could be years before there was a final result.

The law professor at the University of Syracuse, Shubha Ghosh, told Bi than more a drastic remedy which is imposed, “the more likely it will be reversed”.

Google’s lawyer described Doj’s proposal for a “list of wishes” for competitors

In an opening statement on Monday, Google John Schmidtlein’s lawyer qualified the DOJ remedies proposal “A list of wishes for competitors who seek to obtain the advantages of Google’s extraordinary and commercial secrets that we have spent decades to develop,” reported the New York Times.

Google vice-president of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said that the government’s proposal was “useless and harmful” in a blog article before the hearing start.

The DoJ’s proposal would make people more difficult for people to use Google research, “compromise” confidentiality and user safety, and “the hamstrings” How the company develops AI, wrote Mulholland.

The lawyer for the Ministry of Justice, David Dahlquist, said in his declaration of opening on Monday that the court should prevent Google from using its research monopoly to dominate the AI ​​market.

“The appeal of this court should be forward and not to ignore what is going on on the horizon,” said Dahlquist, Times reported. “Google uses the same strategy they have done for research and applies it now” to its Gemini AI chatbot.

Google’s lawyer argued that Gemini Rival, the Openai chatpt, is doing very well.