The US Department of Justice is hotly debating what action to take against Google after a court ruled last week that the search engine giant had a monopoly on the search engine market.
Bloomberg and The New York Times report that some of the options most discussed at the agency include more extreme solutions: Google could be forced to get rid of the Android mobile operating system and/or the Chrome browser.
The Department of Justice believes that Android and Chrome contribute to Google’s dominance among search engines, as Google is the default search engine on both products.
Other options discussed include a requirement for Google to get rid of Google Ads, or that the company would licence its data to competitors such as Microsoft Bing or DuckDuckGo.
According to Statista’s figures from earlier this year, Google clearly dominates among search engines. The search engine has a market share of over 91% per, with Microsoft’s Bing in a very distant second place with just over 3%.
Google was recently taken to court by the US Department of Justice, which accused the company of trying to gain an illegal monopoly in the search engine market. A federal judge has now ruled on the case, reports The Verge, and Google will not be happy with the outcome.
The judge’s decision is that Google has violated US competition laws. “Google is a monopolist, and has acted as one in order to maintain its monopoly,” the court order states. According to the court, Google has a monopoly on “general search services” and “general text advertising in search”.
Google has announced that it will appeal the decision. “This decision recognises that Google offers the best search engine, but has concluded that we cannot make it easily accessible,” said Kent Walker, the company’s head of global affairs.
The next step now is to determine what the penalties there will be for the search engine giant. In the worst case scenario for Google, it could be required to spin off certain parts of its search engine services.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC för Alla and was translated and adapted from Swedish.
