US DoJ considers breaking up Google | Infinium-tech

According to sources who spoke to Bloomberg, Google’s parent company Alphabet may have to split its business into separate companies. The United States Department of Justice is planning to separate Android and Chrome from Google, and there are also talks about making AdWords independent.

These are the most drastic proposals being discussed, but there are also less drastic measures to prevent Google from gaining a monopoly, including forcing the company to share more data with competitors and preventing it from abusing its position.

The discussions have intensified following a Justice Department ruling earlier this month, when Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google had illegally monopolized the search engine market, and had paid more than $2.5 billion to companies like Apple and Samsung to implement its online search and search text ads.

The judge’s decision was historic, as it was the first time in the past 40 years that an American company was found guilty by a US court.

The last time something like this happened was in the early 1980s, when AT&T was found to have an illegal advantage over competitors in the fixed telephone business. In 1984, it was ordered to split its services into separate companies.

US authorities tried something similar with Microsoft two decades ago but failed, and only time will tell if they will be able to force Google to give up its most lucrative businesses: Chrome, Android and AdWords.

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