Judge gives US regulators until December to propose penalties for Google’s illegal search monopoly
A federal judge on Friday gave the U.S. Justice Department until the end of the year to outline how Google should be punished for illegally monopolizing the Internet search engine market. The company will then prepare its case for penalties next spring.
The loose timeline outlined by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta came during the first court hearing since he branded Google a ruthless monopolist in a groundbreaking statement published last month.
Mehta’s decision prompted a new phase in the legal process to determine how to punish Google for years of misconduct and how to force Google to make other changes to prevent potential future abuses by the dominant search engine that is the foundation of his Internet empire.
Attorneys for the Justice Department and Google were unable to reach an agreement on what the sentencing phase should look like in the weeks leading up to Friday’s hearing in Washington, D.C. So Mehta sent them down a path he hopes will result in a sentencing decision before Labor Day next year.
To that end, Mehta indicated he wants the sentencing phase of the trial to take place next spring. The judge said March and April appear to be the best months on his court calendar.
If Mehta’s timeline plays out, it would mean a ruling on Google’s antitrust penalties nearly five years after the Justice Department filed the lawsuit that led to a 10-week antitrust trial last fall. That’s similar to the timeline Microsoft faced in the late 1990s when regulators went after it for its misconduct in the personal computer market.
The Justice Department has yet to determine how severely Google will be punished. The most likely targets are Google’s long-standing deals with Apple, Samsung and other tech companies to make its search engine the default option on smartphones and web browsers.
In exchange for guaranteed search traffic, Google pays its partners more than $25 billion annually. Most of that money goes to Apple for the coveted position on the iPhone.
In an even more drastic scenario, the Justice Department could force Google to give up parts of its business, including its Chrome web browser and the Android software installed on most of the world’s smartphones, because they also capture search traffic.
During Friday’s hearing, Justice Department lawyers said they need enough time to come up with a comprehensive proposal that also takes into account how Google has begun implementing artificial intelligence in its search results and how that technology could turn the market upside down.
Google’s lawyers told the judge they hope the Justice Department proposes a realistic list of penalties that addresses the issues raised in the judge’s ruling, rather than proposing extreme measures that amount to “political wrangling.”
Mehta gave both sides until Sept. 13 to submit a proposed timeline, which includes requiring the Justice Department to announce the proposed sentence by 2025.