Google, Justice Department face off in climactic showdown in search
monopoly case
[May 30, 2025] By
MICHAEL LIEDTKE
Google will return to federal court Friday to fend off the U.S. Justice
Department's attempt to topple its internet empire at the same time it's
navigating a pivotal shift to artificial intelligence that could
undercut its power.
The legal and technological threats facing Google are among the key
issues that will be dissected during the closing arguments of a legal
proceeding that will determine the changes imposed upon the company in
the wake of its dominant search engine being declared as an illegal
monopoly by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta last year.
Brandishing evidence presented during a recent three-week stretch of
hearings, Justice Department lawyers will attempt to persuade Mehta to
order a radical shake-up that includes a ban on Google paying to lock
its search engine in as the default on smart devices and an order
requiring the company to sell its Chrome browser.
Google lawyers are expected to assert only minor concessions are needed,
especially as the upheaval triggered by advances in artificial
intelligence already are reshaping the search landscape, as alternative,
conversational search options are rolling out from AI startups that are
hoping to use the Department of Justice's four-and-half-year-old case to
gain the upper hand in the next technological frontier.
“Over weeks of testimony, we heard from a series of well-funded
companies eager to gain access to Google’s technology so they don’t have
to innovate themselves,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president of
regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post earlier this month. “What we
didn’t hear was how DOJ’s extreme proposals would benefit consumers.”

After the day-long closing arguments, Mehta will spend much of the
summer mulling a decision that he plans to issue before Labor Day.
Google has already vowed to appeal the ruling that branded its search
engine as a monopoly, a step it can't take until the judge orders a
remedy.
While both sides of this showdown agree that AI is an inflection point
for the industry's future, they have disparate views on how the shift
will affect Google.
The Justice Department contends that AI technology by itself won't rein
in Google's power, arguing additional legal restraints must be slapped
on a search engine that's the main reason its parent company, Alphabet
Inc., is valued at $2 trillion.
Google has already been deploying AI to transform its search engine i
nto an answer engine, an effort that has so far helped maintain its
perch as the internet's main gateway despite inroads being made by
alternatives from the likes of OpenAI and Perplexity.
The Justice Department contends a divestiture of the Chrome browser that
Google CEO Sundar Pichai helped build nearly 20 years ago would be among
the most effective countermeasures against Google continuing to amass
massive volumes of browser traffic and personal data that could be
leveraged to retain its dominance in the AI era. Executives from both
OpenAi and Perplexity testified last month that they would be eager
bidders for the Chrome browser if Mehta orders its sale.
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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a Google I/O event in Mountain
View, Calif., Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
 The debate over Google's fate also
has pulled in opinions from Apple, mobile app developers, legal
scholars and startups.
Apple, which collects more than $20 billion
annually to make Google the default search engine on the iPhone and
its other devices, filed briefs arguing against the Justice
Department's proposed 10-year ban on such lucrative lock-in
agreements. Apple told the judge that prohibiting the contracts
would deprive the company of money that it funnels into its own
research, and that the ban might even make Google even more powerful
because the company would be able to hold onto its money while
consumers would end up choosing its search engine anyway. The
Cupertino, California, company also told the judge a ban wouldn't
compel it to build its own search engine to compete against Google.
In other filings, a group of legal scholars said the Justice
Department's proposed divestiture of Chrome would be an improper
penalty that would inject unwarranted government interference in a
company's business. Meanwhile, former Federal Trade Commission
officials James Cooper and Andrew Stivers warned that another
proposal that would require Google to share its data with rival
search engines “does not account for the expectations users have
developed over time regarding the privacy, security, and
stewardship” of their personal information.
The App Association, a group that represents mostly small software
developers, also advised Mehta not to adopt the Justice Department's
proposed changes because of the ripple effects they would have
across the tech industry.
Hobbling Google in the way the Justice Department envisions would
make it more difficult for startups to realize their goal of being
acquired, the App Association wrote. “Developers will be overcome by
uncertainty” if Google is torn apart, the group argues.
Buy Y Combinator, an incubator that has helped create hundreds of
startups collectively worth about $800 billion filed documents
pushing for the dramatic overhaul of Google, whose immense power has
discouraged venture capitalists from investing in areas that are
considered to be part of the company's “kill zone.”
Startups “also need to be able to get their products into the hands
of users, free from restrictive dealing and self-preferencing that
locks up important distribution channels. As things stand, Google
has locked up the most critical distribution channels, freezing the
general search and search text advertising markets into static
competition for more than a decade,” Y Combinator told Mehta.
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