Abigail Slater, American deputy prosecutor general of the antitrust division, is addressed to media members outside the Federal Court in Washington, DC, United States, Monday, April 21, 2025. Google will compete against the Ministry of Justice and dozens of state-of-the-art prosecutors in a Washington online research room The Société de Monopolier The online research market.
Kent Nishimura / Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Kent Nishimura / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Almost a year ago, the American district judge Amit Mehta decided that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly on the search engines market.
It was a decision that sent shock waves via the Silicon Valley and Washington.
Now lawyers from Google and the Ministry of Justice are face At the courtroom of E. Barrett Prettle United States in Washington, DC this time, it is to determine which Mehta penalties will allow the company of around 2 billions of dollars.
In the coming weeks, the two parties will present evidence and should call a multitude of witnesses, including the main players in the technological industry. This includes the CEO of Google Sundar Pichai and Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of the DuckDuckGo search engine competitor, as well as senior VPs from Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, Chatgpt and Google, according to court documents – although this range could change.
Google maintains that it will appeal from Mehta’s decision once the appeal phase of the trial is completed. The technology giant argues that the remedies offered by the DoJ are both dangerous and “unprecedented” and would injure American consumers, the economy and technological leadership and innovation. Sunday, at night, before the hearing begins, Google A long public blog article To say that the “proposals for radical remedies of the doj are both useless and harmful”.
In response, Monday morning when she was held outside the courthouse, Gail Slater, the assistant lawyer of the DoJ for the antitrust decision, replied: “You know what is dangerous? The threat that Google presents to our freedom of expression” and the freedom of innovation of the digital market.
Slater was joined by other lawyers for the government who read statements about an hour before the procedures start. They did not answer questions from the media gathered.
Inside the courtroom, two tables filled with DOJ and Google lawyers sat in Elbow at the start of the procedures.
David Dahlquist, interim deputy director of the DOJ antitrust civil disputes division, spoke for the government in the opening declarations. In a presentation of around 45 minutes, he presented a list of aggressive requirements that the government wishes to see Google implement.
The DoJ calls on the company to disintegrate Chrome, its web browser, and to end the exclusive distribution agreements with telephone manufacturers like Apple and Samsung, by which Google paid them to establish its search engine as default browser on their phones. The Doj also calls for judge Mehta to prevent Google from establishing similar exclusive distribution agreements for its AI programs and applications, such as its GEMINI chatbot, said Dahlquist on Monday.
“We are not here for a pyrrhic victory. We are there to restore competition,” said Dahlquist.
This is an inflection point, he said. He asked the court: the United States will authorize Google, a monopoly, will they control the research market or will it allow competition to prevail?
The beginning of the end of a technological love story
The legal battle began in 2020 when the Ministry of Justice brought its antitrust trial against Google.
The node of the government’s argument is that Google has unjust control of an enormous market share in American research, an evaluation eclipping $ 1 billion. THE The original DOJ trialDeposed alongside 11 state -of -the -art prosecutors, said that the company had concluded agreements of several billion dollars with Apple and Samsung to ensure that its search engine was the default value on the web browsers of their phones. These agreements have indeed explained the google rivals, said the DoJ. Google denied it.
This case marked the start of the end of the long love story Between the world of technology and Washington, DC for many years, the technology industry has developed with little regulatory control. But the main technological players Meta,, Amazon And Apple are now also faced with federal proceedings.
In the same courthouse where the Google Remedy trial takes place, Meta is currently faced with her own antitrust case tabled by the Federal Commerce Committee. The agency maintains that Meta abused its power and acted as a monopoly by acquiring rivals in order to defeat them as competitors.
And it is not the government’s only pursuit against Google: they deposited another in 2023. Last week, A different federal judge ruled Google’s control in online advertising and tele-technology markets violates American antitrust laws.
What were the arguments of the MJ?
The most energetic demand of the government is that judge Mehta orders the technological company to sell its popular Chrome browser.
Chrome is an important gateway to user searches and pilot billions of research income for Google, said Dahlquist. It is the most popular search engine in the world. Forcing Google to sell this piece of the company “would allow competitors to compete,” he said. He called it “a reality of the market” according to which the property of Google de Chrome dissipates the emergence of new competitive alternatives, and that it is a violation of federal antitrust laws.
Google, for its part, refused this proposal.
The DoJ also requests that Google stops making third -party payments to telephony manufacturers to ensure that its browser is the default option on these phones.
Dahlquist said that Google had proposed to delete the word “exclusive” in their agreements with Apple and other companies with any other browser distribution agreement. “That is not enough,” he said, arguing that Google can still be withdrawn from other companies using their existing basic agreements and their ability to offer major money manufacturers.
The government wants to go further to ensure that any remedy prevents Google from establishing similar exclusive agreements for its AI generating products, such as Gemini. Dahlquist said that the rise in Google AI products could open another field that the company could dominate if it is authorized to continue using exclusive contracts – and that they want to prevent it from happening.
How did Google respond?
Google has long promised to appeal, but it must first go through this recourse process.
The company has supported for four years that it has never acted as a monopoly and that the changes, even the smallest, are useless. The business leaders said that its research product was superior to the competitors – and that is why it dominates industry.
John E. Schmidtlein, lawyer for Google, has argued in the opening declarations that the list of doj’s remedies in this case is only a “list of wishes for competitors” and that it will allow them to obtain resources that have taken google decades to develop.
Doj’s proposals aim “to support individual competitors,” he said.
Google considers government’s requests to stop from Chrome as its most prohibitive and “most extreme” request. The business leaders said that the separation of Chrome would break the extremely popular functionality – a repeated declaration by Schmidtlein before the court. Google cannot decide in the Chrome browser without harming other Google products, such as the Chrome operating system and Chromebook laptops, he said.
Addressing the DOJ’s efforts to prevent Google from including Gemini in future exclusive distribution agreements, Schmidtlein said that Gemini were not the subject of the Antitrust case and that the company does not hold a monopoly on AI products.
Schmidtlein underlined the success of competitors’ chatbots, such as CatMetaai and Grok, as proof that competition in this space is healthy and varied. “The idea that Chatgpt cannot get distribution is absurd. They have more distribution than anyone,” he said.
Why is this case a big problem?
Rebecca Haw Allensworth, professor of antitrust law at the Vanderbilt Law School, said that this is the greatest antitrust case of the government for decades.
“This case is extremely important. It is difficult to exaggerate it,” she said. “This is at least an agreement as important as the Microsoft case, which is the last big antitrust case that we had. And it was 25 years ago.”
That Microsoft Case, which was filed in 1998, concerned the company It is Navigator, Internet Explorer, with its Windows operating system. This almost led the company’s division in two – but Microsoft and the Doj settled.
Allesworth added that it is also comparable to cases like the standard case of 1906 of the Ministry of Justice, which is widely considered as the first case of major monopoly. A federal court finally concluded that the oil conglomerate belonging to John D. Rockefeller had illegally monopolized the American refining industry. Consequently, standard oil has been ordered to divide into 40 different companies.
Allesworth said that the result of this part of Google’s test is difficult to plan. But that Google demanding at Chrome is not out of the question.
Google is an NPR financial supporter.
