Tech Policy Press - DOJ Sets Record Straight of What’s Needed to Dismantle Google’s Search Monopoly

Senior reporter Karina Montoya argues that dismantling Google’s search monopoly requires structural changes, such as divesting Chrome which would break its interdependencies with Android, and implementing public oversight on its AI investments, to restore competition and prevent further market entrenchment.

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has cemented its position that Google’s monopoly over search will not be dismantled without structural separations. Despite reports that Google asked the Trump administration to spare it from a break-up, last Friday, the DOJ reaffirmed its request to have Google divest Chrome as part of the remedies the agency is slated to defend before DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta starting on April 21.

As many have pointed out, the DOJ’s revised remedies show the enforcer has indeed kept the core of the original request it submitted in November 2024, including strong behavioral remedies, such as opening Google’s search index to the rest of the market, giving publishers and advertisers more control of their data flowing through Google’s products, and imposing public oversight over Google’s AI investments.

Taken together, the DOJ’s revisions reveal the complexity of having to pry open a market with the levels of entrenchment Google has secured. Ending Google’s revenue sharing with Apple — which is Google’s focus — is, at this point, low-hanging fruit to deliberate in the remedies trial. In fact, the DOJ is now proposing that Apple can receive other payments from Google as long as they are not coming from search or any other search access point and are not used to circumvent any of the self-preferencing prohibitions.

By now, the DOJ’s stance is abundantly clear: to restore competition in search, one has to go beyond the Google-Apple revenue share and look at the interdependencies Google has created to lock in users, creators, publishers, and advertisers to monopolize search; how all this has foreclosed real competition, and how Google may continue to leverage its ill-gotten gains to continue protecting its current monopoly or create future ones.

In anticipation of the trial, here’s a breakdown of the changes in the DOJ’s revised remedies likely to be the focus of the proceedings.

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