The Trump administration sues Google

 

The US government sues Google for alleged anticompetitive abuses in search

The Trump administration on Tuesday sued Google in what is the largest antitrust case against a tech company in more than two decades.

In its complaint, the Justice Department makes sweeping allegations that Google (GOOG) has stifled competition to maintain its powerful position in the marketplace for online search and search advertising.

Eleven states -- Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Carolina and Texas -- joined the suit, according to the complaint.

The complaint targets a series of interlocking actions by Google that, as a whole, allegedly harmed competition and prevented rivals from gaining a meaningful audience.

It alleges in part that Google pays billions of dollars a year to device manufacturers like Apple, LG, Motorola, and Samsung and browser developers like Mozilla and Opera to be their default search engine and in many cases to prohibit them from dealing with Google's competitors. As a result, "Google effectively owns or controls search distribution channels accounting for roughly 80 percent of the general search queries in the United States."

Justice Department officials did not rule out a breakup of Google on a call with reporters Tuesday.

"Nothing is off the table," said Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who warned that if DOJ did not file suit now, "we could lose the next wave of innovation" and that "Americans may never get to see the next Google."

"Today's lawsuit by the Department of Justice is deeply flawed," Google SVP Global Affairs and Chief Legal Officer Kent Walker wrote in a blog post. "People use Google because they choose to, not because they're forced to, or because they can't find alternatives."

The post goes on to say that the DOJ complaint "relies on dubious antitrust arguments" that "would do nothing to help consumers."

"To the contrary, it would artificially prop up lower-quality search alternatives, raise phone prices, and make it harder for people to get the search services they want to use," Walker wrote.

Google said its practice of paying to be the default search engine on smartphones like Apple's is "no different" from moves by other businesses to promote their products, "just like a cereal brand might pay a supermarket to stock its products at the end of a row or on a shelf at eye level."

Rosen said that the Google suit represents a "milestone" but not the end of DOJ's wide-ranging review of the tech industry, and that other lawsuits could be filed "where necessary."

The landmark federal complaint follows a year-long antitrust probe by DOJ investigators and comes right before an election in which tech platforms have been scrutinized for their impact on democracy and small business. It also comes on the heels of a major congressional reportfinding that Google and other tech giants enjoy "monopoly power" and have wielded their dominance in anticompetitive ways. That report alleges that Amazon has mistreated third-party sellers; that Apple's app store fees and policies are anti-competitive; and that Facebook has sought to eliminate future rivals through targeted acquisition