Business US considers breaking up Google after illegal monopoly ruling, reports say - A week after a judge ruled the tech giant illegally monopolized the online search market, the US Department of Justice is considering options that include breaking up Alphabet’s Google, worth some $2tn.

Google is planning to appeal the ruling that it violated antitrust laws to build a search monopoly. Photograph: Juliana Yamada/AP

A week after a judge ruled the tech giant illegally monopolized the online search market, the US Department of Justice is considering options that include breaking up Alphabet’s Google, worth some $2tn, according to reports from the New York Times and Bloomberg News.

Divesting the Android operating system was one of the remedies most frequently discussed by justice department attorneys, the reports said.

Officials were also considering trying to force a possible sale of AdWords, Google’s search ad program, and a possible divestment of its Chrome web browser, according to the reports.

A justice department spokesperson said it was evaluating the court’s decision and would assess the appropriate next steps consistent with the court’s direction and the applicable legal framework for antitrust remedies.

The spokesperson said no decisions had yet been made. A Google spokesperson declined to comment. Google is planning to appeal the ruling. It faces another antitrust suit by the US justice department set to go to trial next month.

The justice department’s other options include forcing Google to share data with competitors and instating measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, the reports said, citing people familiar with the matter.

During the trial, it was revealed that Google paid companies, including Apple, more than $26bn in 2021 alone to remain the default option for search in Safari. Those deals allowed Google to build a monopoly over search and unfairly suppress competition, the judge found.

Shortly after the judge made his ruling, the competing search engine DuckDuckGo proposed banning those exclusive agreements.

The verdict, delivered last week, held that Google violated antitrust law, spending billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly and become the world’s default search engine. The ruling is seen as the first big win for federal authorities taking on the market dominance of big tech.

Federal antitrust regulators have sued Meta Platforms, Amazon.com and Apple in the past four years, claiming the companies illegally maintained monopolies.

Microsoft had settled with the justice department in 2004 on claims it forced its Internet Explorer web browser on Windows users.

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[The Lawgiver]

"breaking up alphabet's google"
Oh yeah google as a company changed their name to alphabet a real good while ago, didn't they? So they're breaking up the search engine?or just forcing them to rebrand the different sub-googles into their own separate things? NOT ACTUALLY BREAKINGUP THE COMPANY FORMERLY KNOWN AS GOOGLE PEOPLE STILL CALL GOOGLE BECAUSE ALPHABET IS RETARDED?

 

[Imagine Reading This LOL]

With everything Firefox has done with its criminally overpaid CEO, active endorsement of Internet censorship plus globohomo and its recent advertising bullshit I want trannyfox dead for the sole reason of the 10% possibility it lights a fire under somebody's ass to make something actually good.

"I want the only competitor to Google's complete ownership of the browser market to die because MAYBE someone will make something that isnt pozzed!"

Hoping for someone else to make something to solve your problems has never been a viable solution, the days where new companies will spring up to fill the power gap left by old companies has been and gone. Tech companies succeed then pull the ladder up behind them so nobody can compete with them, thats the reason why all the "great innovators" of tech and the silicon valley big names are all from a decade or two ago.

Nobody is coming to make a Firefox replacement, all your idea will achieve is for Google to obtain complete 100% control over the browsers we use to browse the internet. You would hand the keys for Google to be the sole gatekeeper or what we see on the internet.

Firefox's advertisement shit was bad, but have you not seen what Google is doing with Manifest v3? They are neutering adblockers at the request of advertising firms because people who use uBlock Origin are cutting into their profits. Mozilla's shit is much more tolerable in comparison. Google literally took down AdNeauseum because it was costing advertisers so much, guess who didnt? Mozilla.

But you would rather Google and their browsers take over because... the CEO gets paid more then they deserve and they publicly throw their voice behind some culture war shit?

Do you plan to make a Firefox replacement? Are you going to make your own rendering engine and then put in the funds to get enough of a userbase that websites start supporting your besoke browser? Have you read and are intimately familiar with the HTML5 spec? Do you even know how to code? Didn't think so.

You are advocating against your own interests.

 

[Seymour Duncan]

Tech companies succeed then pull the ladder up behind them

Reminder that the HTML5 spec PDF is not only almost 1500 pages long as of this message, but it's also a "living spec" which means you're trying to score against a target that Google effectively gets to move around completely at will with some input from Apple and Mozilla, and after that you still have a gorillion other WHATWG specs your browser would need to fulfill. It's intentionally designed to be EXTREMELY difficult to fulfill even for a large team of paid full time professionals, let alone a theoretical group of Based Programmers™ and even after that you'd still have to fight against websites intentionally discriminating against you because you aren't reporting yourself as one of the kosher user agents which means your browser is considered shit and unusable by default, oh and Google will just make their products intentionally shit on your browser to further tarnish your ass to sit in the nonfunctional hobbyist alternative pile.

If Firefox dies, Google gets to run the show almost entirely by themselves as long as Apple doesn't veto their moves and the only alternative with an inkling of promise is Ladybird the pre-pre-pre-pre-alpha project that will take a long, long time to come to fruition if it manages to hold together throughout the very choppy seas in the first place. I'm holding out hope that they can hit the goal because modern web DESPERATELY needs a disruption, but I can't put all of my eggs into that one basket still in planning phase.

 

[AnotherPleb]

The internet is gonna learn the hard way why the words archive everything are so important

Archives have to be local too because the public archives are forever until they aren't.

 

[HRT Heisenberg]

"I want the only competitor to Google's complete ownership of the browser market to die because MAYBE someone will make something that isnt pozzed!"

I would rephrase that to Firefox deserves to die just as much Google does but we all know the latter will never happen. Firefox is forced competition and as such Google is pretty much already there in being able to do whatever the fuck they want. Having Firefox around to circumvent Google's fuckery is great, but Google would also hold Firefox's precious paycheck to ransom if they weren't so scared of killing off their only competition.

The current status quo sucks and I'd rather also see change and something that lifts the façade of Google having any competition is something I think would be fun to see, even if it has the risk of fucking up the Internet. I'm so done with it all that I'm happy with selfishly saying I'd like to see a risk it all goes to shit for a 10% chance of something going somewhere.

Do you plan to make a Firefox replacement? Are you going to make your own rendering engine and then put in the funds to get enough of a userbase that websites start supporting your besoke browser? Do you even know how to code? Didn't think so.

My nigga do you plan on making a replacement? I do program a lot and I'd like to believe the stuff I make makes the world a little less shit. I'd also like to see a better web browser, an environment for Linux that doesn't suck out of the box and another unix style terminal emulator for phones now that Android's termux is dead. But because my focus isn't in those areas I'm happy to hope that one day someone more knowledgeable in those areas will make it. We all use software written by someone else.

Reminder that the HTML5 spec PDF is not only almost 1500 pages long as of this message, but it's also a "living spec" which means you're trying to score against a target that Google effectively gets to move around completely at will with some input from Apple and Mozilla, and after that you still have a gorillion other WHATWG specs your browser would need to fulfill. It's intentionally designed to be EXTREMELY difficult to fulfill even for a large team of paid full time professionals, let alone a theoretical group of Based Programmers™

With that being the case I wonder how the hell Mozilla keeps up as is, didn't they lay off their core staff years ago? I wonder how the dev team is going now.

 

[Imagine Reading This LOL]

My nigga do you plan on making a replacement? I do program a lot and I'd like to believe the stuff I make makes the world a little less shit. I'd also like to see a better web browser, an environment for Linux that doesn't suck out of the box and another unix style terminal emulator for phones now that Android's termux is dead. But because my focus isn't in those areas I'm happy to hope that one day someone more knowledgeable in those areas will make it. We all use software written by someone else.

If you aren't willing to be the change you want to see, then your position is untenable. You are advocating for Google to have a complete monopoly.

There is not a group of based programmers coming to save us. Nobody is coming to replace Firefox. If you are okay with losing Firefox because of this, then your position is pro-google monopoly. There is nothing else to it.

Question is, are you genuinely this ignorant of the existential threat to the internet this poses or are you a shill for Alphabet?