Will Google be split up? 

The US justice department announced on Tuesday it’s considering asking a federal judge to force Google to sell off parts of its business, potentially resulting in the corporate breakup of one of the biggest tech companies in the world. 

In practice that could look like ordering Google to divest from Chrome (its web browser), Android (its operating system), and/or Play (Google’s app store). 

Some context. The 32-page document, which includes several proposals to right Google’s wrongs, comes on the heels of a landmark August ruling, which accused the giant of running an illegal monopoly over internet searches. 

Judge Amit Mehta had found that Google maintained its search monopoly in part by unlawfully making billion-dollar deals with companies such as Apple, Android, and Samsung, to make its search engine the default on their devices.

And that’s all in addition to a handful of other antitrust lawsuits Google has been facing from tech rivals, US states, and even the EU. Good time to be a Google lawyer.

Ok, but where’s the International Intrigue™?

First,anything that might significantly alter the structure of a global tech company as big as Google is bound to have international repercussions. 

Just to give a sense of how important Google is:

• It operates in over 219 countries and territories, which is more than we thought even existed, making it – by far – the most used search engine worldwide
• That makes it key to the way citizens and governments share info all around the world, with capitals lodging over 440,000 removal requests since 2011, and
• Google also works with (for example) the US military, providing secure cloud services for the Pentagon under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability.

Second, Google has described the justice department’s remedy proposals as “radical” and says they’ll lead to “significant unintended consequences for consumers, businesses, and American competitiveness”. 

Or to put it another way, with nations everywhere now racing for tech supremacy (particularly in AI), Google is arguing this really isn’t the time to be clipping the wings of one of America’s tech champions. In response, the argument goes that a break-up would theoretically leave more space for other smaller tech firms to innovate and grow.

And third, a move this big might set the tone for regulators everywhere, who typically monitor US regulatory and court decisions closely.

Has something like this ever happened before? Yes and no. 

Folks might recall a similar move against Microsoft back in 2000, when a court ordered its break-up for breaching competition law with its Windows 🤝 Internet Explorer bundles.

But Microsoft later appealed the decision, and while the appeals court stood firm on the monopoly allegations, it declined to enforce the remedy. So Microsoft ended up settling the case, and it’s a fair bet that Google is probably hoping for a similar outcome.

But plot twist: this time around, the first breakup order might not even come from the US. That’s because the EU’s top competition enforcer has already threatened Google with an order to sell its adtech business to address concerns it favours its own advertising services (echoing a suggestion already made by the US justice department).

So, what’s next? Google has until December 20 to propose its own fixes to the court, and Judge Mehta is then planning to hold a trial and issue a decision by August 2025. In the meantime, Google has already said it’ll appeal, so once again, probably a good time to have a law degree in the Bay area.

INTRIGUE’S TAKE

It’s been interesting to watch this play out both domestically and abroad.

In the US, political consensus around the need to rein in (and possibly break up) big tech really gained momentum after various scandals left both sides of the aisle spooked for different reasons (eg, privacy vs freedom of speech). But the first big bipartisan legislative crackdown in decades still failed in 2022 after a major lobbying effort from the sector. So now it’s up to the courts.

Meanwhile internationally, US tech firms have already had to make big changes to comply with EU crackdowns. But while US diplomats long objected to these kinds of foreign measures, the above political changes back home seem to be filtering through to the way the US approaches these issues abroad. And to the extent the US and the EU can see eye-to-eye on tech policy, that potentially frees them up to tackle other disagreements in areas like industrial policy (subsidies).

Anyway, we’d love to hear what you think in today’s poll 👇

Also worth noting:

• Google reportedly handles around 90% of all internet searches in the US, though it doesn’t reveal specific figures. Its share of search advertising revenue is likely closer to 50% and shrinking (Amazon is the main competitor).
• Hours after the justice department’s announcement, two Google researchers shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. An ex-Google researcher also just won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• The justice department is also suing Apple over antitrust issues, with a trial not expected until 2026.