Unwinding the advantages of a company that has been a verb for searching online for almost 20 years is no mean feat, and the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has set its bar high for remedies following its court victory against Alphabet (US:GOOG) in August.
A judge ruled that Google's parent company had been illegally maintaining its monopoly in search. The case focused on the fact that Google paid billions of dollars to Apple (US:AAPL) to make it the default search engine on iPhones. At the time, judge Amit Mehta put Alphabet’s actions in stark terms: “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.”
The DoJ has now published its argument about what should be done about it. “Unwinding [the] illegal behaviour and achieving the goals of an effective antitrust remedy takes time, information (particularly given the informational asymmetries between [the] plaintiffs and Google), and careful consideration,” the DoJ filing said.