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.

Article Link

Archive

 

[General Emílio Médici]

TOTAL ALPHABET DEATH

GOOGLE DELENDA EST

TIE ME TO A ICBM AND FIRE ME AT MOUNTAIN VIEW I AM READY GOD

 

[6MillionCoofs]

Break them up and use this as precedence to break up the other monopolies.

Most of them are already seperste buissnesses. Which is likely the problem law makers are going to have it. Especially when Google can always dangle the entire internet being screwed forever, because everything else is heavily tied into it.

 

[Crex Crex]

Please let this become reality. I hope that Youtube dies soon

I don't want youtube to die, I want it to return to it's pre-google state when anyone could post anything and there were no millionaire youtubers shitting out corporate videos.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Make Teddy Roosevelt proud.

 

[Imagine Reading This LOL]

I just hope this doesn't fuck over Mozilla.

Firefox is the only non-chromium browser thats decent and it gets 90% of its gross income from Google paying it to have Google by the default search browser.

That funding goes away and it would literally be the end of Firefox the same day. The instant that funding goes away Firefox is insolvent.

I don't want to go back to Chromium browsers bros, I like functioning adblockers.

 

[Kane Lives]

I just hope this doesn't fuck over Mozilla.

Firefox is the only non-chromium browser thats decent and it gets 90% of its gross income from Google paying it to have Google by the default search browser.

That funding goes away and it would literally be the end of Firefox the same day. The instant that funding goes away Firefox is insolvent.

I don't want to go back to Chromium browsers bros, I like functioning adblockers.

And you don't see the problem of having Google literally pay to prop up their competitor?

Just seems kinda fucked.

 

[Imagine Reading This LOL]

And you don't see the problem of having Google literally pay to prop up their competitor?

Just seems kinda fucked.

I agree, it is fucked.

That being said, i'd rather have a Firefox propped up by Google than no Firefox at all and being forced to use Chromium goyslop.

If you think you know a way for Firefox to be sustainable as a business without needing Google to prop them up then Mozilla would probably love to hire you.

 

[Cave Fisher]

I'm a little too cynical for big "they're BREAKING apart this huge company!" headlines these days after years of them doing whatever the fuck they want, this is probably all just a show for the public, or Google actually managed to piss off the wrong person above them.

 

[Anti Snigger]

The justice department’s other options include forcing Google to share data with competitors

Retard alert

 

[Heed Not]

If you think you know a way for Firefox to be sustainable as a business without needing Google to prop them up then Mozilla would probably love to hire you.

Stop doing gay shit like chasing off your founder for not liking gay shit enough.
There. You can pay me in BAT, firefags.

 

[Dyn]

If you think you know a way for Firefox to be sustainable as a business without needing Google to prop them up then Mozilla would probably love to hire you.

They should launder drug money for a cartel.

 

[LGTV]

Alphabet getting fucked by the government?

 

[Super-Chevy454]

I hope then Google breaking up won't be a repeat of the AT&T situation. There was a clip of Stephen Colbert back when he was more funny explaining the AT&T break-up and later mergers and that clip is now hard to find.

 

[Loose Goose]

They are not going to do shit. This looks like a threat to Google to play ball during the elections and do the feds' bidding. "Play along and nobody gets hurt." There is bound to be a lot of dirt on the company and its C-suite that could be a major inconvenience if it came to discovery. Same with Zuckerberg and the others. They are sensitive infrastructure in the surveillance state.

Of course, this would also imply the feds are getting anxious enough about the elections to send a reminder, or they don't believe their grip is firm enough for their liking, which should be a ray of hope.

 

[23 bold flavors]

I agree, it is fucked.

That being said, i'd rather have a Firefox propped up by Google than no Firefox at all and being forced to use Chromium goyslop.

If you think you know a way for Firefox to be sustainable as a business without needing Google to prop them up then Mozilla would probably love to hire you.

Lmao you'd rather have Google be the author of what people see whenever they want to look up something they are curious about, solely bc you don't want to change web browsers. What the fuck.

That's comically selfish. Especially considering Alphabet is a heinously evil corp that donates to politicians that want to further bring this country down a path of a managed decline. They DE LISTED US also!

Respect I guess for wanting to watch the world burn before changing your browser.

 

[Imagine Reading This LOL]

Lmao you'd rather have Google be the author of what people see whenever they want to look up something they are curious about, solely bc you don't want to change web browsers. What the fuck.

That's comically selfish. Especially considering Alphabet is a heinously evil corp that donates to politicians that want to further bring this country down a path of a managed decline. They DE LISTED US also!

Respect I guess for wanting to watch the world burn before changing your browser.

I can change which search engine I use when i'm using Firefox, if Firefox dies the ONLY browsers left are GOOGLE browsers based on GOOGLE'S Chromium framework. The same Chromium which has introduced Manifest v3 specifically so they can neuter adblockers to the point of non-functionality and who has exercised a lot more control over forks of Chromium and what they can and cannot do.

If Firefox dies, you have NO CHOICE but you use Google's goyslop browser. Brave? Comodo? Edge? Opera? Vivaldi? Torch? Every Non-Firefox FOSS browser that still gets somewhat regular updates? ALL Chromium and ALL at the whims of Google. You will never, ever, EVER be able to completely de-google like I have if Firefox dies.

Firefox is the only non-chromium browser that is usable and still receives regular security updates. If you lose Firefox, you will be Google's cuck bitch forever and your ability to browse the web will forever be at the whims of the un-elected plutocrats who work at Alphabet.

No safety in other non-chromium browsers either, all the decent non-chromium browsers are forks of Firefox. So if you think you can just switch to Librewolf, Waterfox, Pale Moon, Cliqz or even TOR Browser, no you cannot, every browser I just mentioned is a fork of Firefox or relies on Firefox's binaries in some way and they will be the collateral damage of Firefox dying.

And before any of you faggots say "UMM ACTUALLY THERES X BROWSER THAT ISNT CHROMIUM OR FIREFOX", whatever browser you are about to mention either does not receive regular updates, is horrifically out of date, is the passion project of some FOSS script kiddys who have no idea how to make a browser for the world wide web from scratch and is largely unsuable as a daily driver or has such a small userbase that most websites don't support it and there is no ecosystem for essential addons such as adblockers.

You won't find a bigger advocate in breaking up Google than me, but I am not in favor of getting a short term win if it means the long term googlefication of all technology will be accelerated.

You are a short sighted fool if you think losing Firefox is an acceptable causality if it means breaking up Google.

You are unironically advocating for the very position you accuse me of advocating for, that being Google and Google alone being the author and gatekeeper of what people see when they want to browse the web, because that will be a reality if Firefox dies and the only remaining browsers are Google's browsers or browsers based on Google's shit.

Losing Firefox would be the biggest loss for free and open internet since Backbone ISPs crossed the rubicon during DropKiwifarms and started telling their customers what they can and cannot see on the internet and faggots like you are celebrating this because it means Google gets split into several companies that will continue to work together for business continuity and can't pay Browsers to use its search engine by default when you've always been able to change your default search engine.

You are advocating against your own interests.

 

[Prokhor Zakharov]

And you don't see the problem of having Google literally pay to prop up their competitor?

Just seems kinda fucked.

This happened in the late 90s when Microsoft gave money to Apple to literally keep them alive as a "competitor"

To me, this seems to be the definition of "controlled opposition" and "artificial diversity of choice"

Personally, after 2008, I think the government should have passed a comprehensive law with methods for chopping up companies that are "too big to fail" to guarantee that would never happen again in that manner. However, our government, when it comes to the corporate world, is the living definition of "regulatory capture". They would never do anything that could cause their blood money to be withdrawn and given to someone who might take their comfy job of being a worthless sack of shit taking up space and actively harming the American public.

 

[Town Drunk]

I don't want youtube to die, I want it to return to it's pre-google state when anyone could post anything and there were no millionaire youtubers shitting out corporate videos.

Youtube will die eventually, and while I hate what it's become, the amount of information lost will be tragic.

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

Youtube will die eventually, and while I hate what it's become, the amount of information lost will be tragic.

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

 

[HRT Heisenberg]

You are a short sighted fool if you think losing Firefox is an acceptable causality if it means breaking up Google.

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.