The Department of Justice’s landmark proposal to dismantle Google’s search monopoly offers the first clear window into how Washington’s accelerating antitrust effort could clip the wings of Big Tech giants — and also highlights political questions about how long the push will survive.
Unlike European regulators targeting the same firms, President Joe Biden’s enforcers are swinging for the fences, proposing a radical restructuring of how Google works rather than chipping away at the company with fines.
“What is remarkable is the breadth of the proposal,” said Cristina Caffarra, co-founder of the Competition Research Policy Network and an adviser to regulators and plaintiffs going after Google on both sides of the Atlantic.
The DOJ’s proposal, filed late Tuesday night, comes after a judge found in August that the company illegally monopolized the online search and advertising markets. The potential remedies being proposed by the government are sweeping: From limits on new deals with phone or computer makers to restrictions on the use of artificial intelligence and even a full-scale restructuring, virtually everything is under consideration. A final proposal is due late next month.
But as America’s competition enforcers ratchet up their fight with top tech firms — Apple, Amazon and Meta are also facing lawsuits, and Google is embroiled in a separate DOJ fight — they’re expected to hit a series of hurdles.
The Google trial, first through the process, faces a long series of filing dates, court hearings and likely challenges that will drag any meaningful changes out for years. And all the cases could encounter skeptical judges worried about overly invasive remedies to monopoly power.
With a new administration poised to take the White House next year, presidential politics could also undercut any broader push against the tech giants. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are both under pressure to replace Biden’s hard-charging antitrust enforcers — particularly Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.
“Neither candidate has been very clear about their antitrust priorities,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, an antitrust expert at Vanderbilt Law School.
Spokespeople for the Harris campaign declined to comment on whether the vice president supports a Google breakup, or would maintain Biden’s antitrust stance on tech if elected president. Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said that while the GOP nominee has assembled a transition leadership group, “formal discussions of who will serve in a second Trump Administration [are] premature.”
It’s possible that specifics could change as the DOJ finalizes its requests over the next month. But its aggressive proposal to cut Google down to size is already seen by antitrust experts as a signal of what could be coming for Big Tech — with America’s antitrust enforcers increasingly willing to take big shots at the most powerful companies on the planet.
Florian Ederer, an economist at Boston University who specializes in competition policy, said the tentative proposal to spin off key Google products like Chrome or Android “would mark a historic moment in [digital] antitrust enforcement.” He said such a breakup “could have profound economic impacts, not only for Google but for the broader tech ecosystem.”
Caffarra called it “a world away from the European approach,” which she framed as far too cautious.
“That U.S. enforcement went from being way behind Europe — comatose until 2019 — to this in five years is a testament that antitrust is mainly about posture and drive, and regulators getting their act together,” Caffarra said.
In addition to the DOJ, the Google search case was joined by the attorneys general of dozens of states, which remain co-plaintiffs.
In a statement, Google attacked the DOJ’s “radical and sweeping proposals” and warned of “unintended consequences” — including weakened consumer privacy, the collapse of popular Google products and a decline in American AI innovation “at a critical moment.”
The tech lobby largely echoed Google’s complaints. Chris Mohr, president of the Software and Information Industry Association, said in a Wednesday statement that the DOJ “seeks to punish Google for its continued innovation” and that its proposal “will make the internet less safe for Americans … kneecap AI development and undermine broader U.S. national interests.”
Google noted that Tuesday’s DOJ proposal is “the start of a long process.” The company plans to appeal the underlying decision that it has an illegal monopoly, a process that will likely take years to fully resolve. It pledged to respond to the DOJ’s final remedies “as we make our case in court next year.”
It’s possible that the DOJ’s antitrust enforcers will ultimately back away from a Google breakup or other more aggressive fixes to its monopoly.
Allensworth said many of the DOJ’s asks already “push the envelope in terms of being stronger than what antitrust has, for the last 40 years anyway, imposed in monopolization cases.” And if the agency keeps its foot on the gas, she said, there’s a strong chance that federal judges will reject its more intrusive changes to the company — especially any plans to spin off Android, Chrome or Play.
“This I view as a very unlikely remedy for the judge to grant, because breakups are seen as an unusually invasive remedy that would need a strong justification,” Allensworth said. She added that Google’s control over those three products is largely ancillary to this specific case.
The DOJ’s antitrust enforcers will also be under new leadership in the White House come January. Jonathan Kanter, head of the agency’s Antitrust Division, would almost certainly step down if Trump wins, and the former president would face significant pressure from orthodox conservatives to replace him with a softer touch. Harris is under her own pressure from tech billionaires — including some bankrolling her presidential campaign — to fire aggressive antitrust enforcers like Khan.
“All bets are off if Trump wins,” said Caffarra, adding that it’s also “really unclear” who Harris will pick to lead the DOJ and its antitrust wing.
But other experts don’t anticipate a major change once Biden leaves office.
In the specific case of Google’s search monopoly, the horse has largely left the barn: the DOJ will have already filed its final remedies by the time a new president takes over, teeing up a lengthy appeals process.
Bill Kovacic, a former FTC chair and antitrust professor at George Washington University Law School, said he suspects Trump “will not tamper with” the case, which was initially filed in 2020, toward the end of his administration.
“Trump brought the Google search case! That’s his case,” Kovacic said. “He doesn’t like these companies. He has no sympathy for them. So I imagine he would tell his assistant attorney general, ‘Keep up the good work, full speed ahead.’”
Despite clamoring from billionaires, Kovacic said Harris is also unlikely to dump Biden’s pugnacious approach to Big Tech’s market power. He noted a large fanbase for antitrust enforcement in Washington and beyond that worries Harris will cave to Silicon Valley, where she started her career.
“She would pay a significant price if she were to back off in any way in these big, visible, high-profile cases,” Kovacic said.
Despite the many hurdles and open questions, the former FTC chair said Tuesday’s preliminary DOJ proposal is less a high-water mark than a sign of things to come.
“It’s going to give confidence to the plaintiffs in the other cases that they can prevail against a formidable, dominant firm in this field,” said Kovacic. “It shows it can be done. You see people scaling the highest mountains, and you think ‘I can climb, too.’”
Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
