Google and Justice Department lawyers appeared before a federal judge Monday to begin trial proceedings in a landmark antitrust case — one that will determine just how far Google must go to break up its monopolistic online search engine.
The high-stakes trial, slated to play out in court over the next three weeks, could historically alter the fate of one of Silicon Valley’s biggest, most domineering tech giants.
Both the Justice Department and Google will present remedies to resolve what U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled last summer was Google’s illegal monopoly in the online search engine space.
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The result of the so-called “remedies trial” could determine the future of Google’s search engine, or the driving force of the $1.8 trillion company. Justice Department lawyer David Dahlquist urged the court Monday to abide by its earlier framework as it looks to break up Google’s dominance in the online search engine sector.
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“Google’s illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that – no matter what occurs – Google always wins,” Justice Department lawyers said in their filing.
They argued Monday that Google’s search engine grew to dominate the internet largely by the company’s payment of web browsers and certain smartphone manufacturers as a method to box out competition.
The Justice Department has asked the court that Google be required to sell off its Chrome browser, share years of its consumer data with competitors, and to potentially sell Android, Google’s smartphone operating system.
They said Monday that these steps could also stop Google from obtaining a monopoly in the AI space — acknowledging that technology is going to evolve, and therefore remedies must “include the ability to evolve alongside it as well.”
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“This court’s remedy should be forward-looking and not ignore what is on the horizon,” Dahlquist told the court.
Google, for its part, has proposed a much narrower remedies proposal.
Lawyers for the company told the court Monday that DOJ’s proposed framework would be a backwards-looking remedy, and one they said would stifle innovation and fail to regulate the anticompetitive conduct the plan set out to address.
And they reiterated that it could cause real harm to innovative services that depend on Google for search placement, such as Mozilla Firefox.
The plan goes “miles beyond” the relief ordered by Judge Mehta, Kent Walker, Google’s vice president of global engagement, told Fox News Digital ahead of the hearing.
“They bear little or no relationship to the conduct found anticompetitive, and are contrary to the law,” Google argued.
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Google executives have also cited concerns about the range of consumer data they could be forced to share with their competitors under the remedies framework submitted by DOJ — including both U.S. companies and foreign competitors — and have cited concerns that the amount of data shared in the proposal by DOJ would present new risks to consumer privacy, and national security.
Their options presented to the court include shorter contracts for browser companies, like Apple and Mozilla; new contracts with Android, to allow for additional flexibility and the option to preload multiple search engines; and other important steps to make the landscape more competitive.
The two sides are expected to continue to battle over the remedies in the coming weeks, and Judge Mehta is expected to rule on the case by June.
In the meantime, both sides are slated to hear testimony from long lists of witnesses, including senior Google officials.
Google’s lawyers said Monday that they plan to call Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, as a witness in the case next week.
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