Google confronted an existential threat Monday, with the U.S. government attempting to break up the company as punishment for turning its search engine into a monopoly, the Associated Press reports.
Hearings over the next three weeks will determine how the company should be penalized for operating an illegal monopoly. In its opening arguments, federal antitrust enforcers also urged the court to impose forward-looking remedies to prevent Google from using the same strategies to build a monopoly around artificial intelligence.
The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal judge to order a radical shake-up that would ban Google from striking the multibillion dollar deals with Apple and other tech companies that shield its search engine from competition, share its repository of valuable user data with rivals and force a sale of its popular Chrome browser.
The moment of reckoning comes four-and-half-years after the Justice Department filed a landmark lawsuit alleging Google’s search engine had been abusing its power as the internet’s main gateway to stifle competition and innovation for more than a decade.
