The US Department of Justice and Google are facing off in court over allegations that the company is illegally maintaining its dominance in the search engine market. As a result, the DOJ is advocating for Google to sell off some of its key assets, including its Chrome browser. The hearings began April 22 and are expected to last three weeks.

This proposal has attracted interest from several tech companies, including OpenAI, Perplexity AI and Yahoo, all expressing willingness to purchase Chrome should the court mandate its sale.

The case could change how tech companies do business, as well as how people find answers to their online search queries. Government lawyers made their case in opening statements Monday, saying that Google should be forced to sell Chrome, its web browser, which pushes people to the Google search engine.

The company should also be forced to help rival search engines that it has unfairly kept out of competition, Justice Department lawyer David Dahlquist said.

“This is the time for the court to tell Google and all other monopolists who are out there listening, and they are listening, that there are consequences when you break the antitrust laws,” Dahlquist said, according to The New York Times.

Google counters

Google’s lawyers say that any remedies should only consider the company’s deals with companies such as Apple, Mozilla and Samsung to make it the default search engine for smartphones and other devices.

“Google won its place in the market fair and square,” said company attorney John Schmidtlein, according to NBC News.

Judge Amit P. Mehta, of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, is now hearing arguments and executives from major tech and artificial intelligence companies have been testifying. 

Mehta is the same judge who ruled in August that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in search. That trial, held last year, took 10 weeks and was years in the making.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote in the August decision. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”

After Mehta hears arguments, he’s expected to order remedies by the end of summer.

Google is currently the king of online search, with more than 89% global market share, according to GlobalStats, down slightly from 91% last summer.

A representative for Google referred CNET to the company’s online statement from before the hearings began. In it, company vice president Lee-Anne Mulholland says such sweeping remedies would harm America’s economy.

Mulholland calls the action “a backwards-looking case” and says the DOJ proposal would make it harder for users to get to preferred services, would prevent the company from competing fairly and would force Google to share users’ private search queries with other companies.

OpenAI, Perplexity and Yahoo want to buy Chrome

On Tuesday, OpenAI executive Nick Turley testified that his company would be interested in buying the Google Chrome browser if the company is forced to sell it. 

He also said that ChatGPT, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot, is “years away from its goal of being able to use its own search technology to answer 80% of queries,” according to Reuters. Turley also testified that Google declined an attempt by OpenAI to use Google search technology within ChatGPT.

Two other companies have also expressed interest in buying Chrome — Perplexity AI and Yahoo. 

Perplexity’s chief business officer, Dmitry Shevelenko, expressed interest in purchasing Chrome in court. 

Yahoo’s general manager of search, Brian Provost, also testified that the company is interested in acquiring Chrome. Yahoo has been developing its own browser prototype but believes that purchasing Chrome is a faster route to increasing its search market share, according to The Verge.

Potential outcomes

Many things could happen to Google, including a breakup of the company. If such a penalty were instituted, it might involve breaking off the company’s Chrome browser or Android smartphone operating system divisions. 

The DOJ wants to prohibit Google from entering into exclusive agreements that make its search engine the default on devices and browsers. The DOJ also wants Google to share certain user data with competitors to level the playing field.

This would be the government’s first attempt to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since its unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft two decades ago.

Google could also be forced to make its data available to competitors or abandon the controversial economic deals that made the Google search engine the default on devices such as the iPhone.

Could Google settle?

“My gut feeling is Google will settle with some compromises,” Chirag Shah, a professor at the Information School at the University of Washington, told CNET. “There are three big things on the negotiating table: the Chrome browser, Google’s deals with Apple and others for the default search engine spot, and the ad market where Google has a monopoly and tons of data. I don’t think the FTC is going to get it all, so the question is what would be a worthy settlement for both sides.”

OpenAI, Microsoft, and Apple have all benefited from Google’s prominence, but also directly compete with the search giant, Shah said, dubbing them “frenemies.”

“I would also be interested in DuckDuckGo’s stand here,” Shah said, referring to the privacy-minded search engine. “For long, search engines like that have been squashed due to all these monopolistic behaviors Google has exhibited. That’s not an unknown thing, but the question is — how much that detail is paid attention to now.”

But Google remains the giant gorilla of the search world, he notes.

“As far as the traditional search goes, yes, Google is practically the only player,” Shah said. “When you have a market share of 90%, I don’t know how else to describe it. There are not many product categories where such an imbalance exists. It’s also a very tough space to get [into] as a newcomer and survive. Dozens of companies have come and gone, and I don’t see anyone in the near future being able to break through that.”

Why does this all matter?

Google is not the only company facing legal issues. Major tech companies Apple and Amazon are also facing antitrust lawsuits. An antitrust trial against Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, began April 14.

The trial could also affect the burgeoning artificial intelligence era. The Justice Department has said that if remedies are not imposed on Google, it expects Google to use its AI products to further extend its monopoly.

Also, since the August trial, presidential administrations have changed. As the Times notes, the hearings signal that the Trump administration intends to keep an eye on the changing tech industry.

Do people switch from default search engines?

The August case focused on Google paying Apple and other companies to make its search engine the default on devices such as Apple’s iPhone. Google has said it didn’t maintain a monopoly through such agreements and that consumers could change their device defaults to use other search engines. 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified in October that the idea that people shift from one search engine to another is “completely bogus” and added “defaults is the only thing that matters in changing search behavior.”

According to the Justice Department, the Google search engine is used for nearly 90% of web searches, but the company disputes that number, the Times reports.

The Sherman Antitrust Act, which dates to 1890, prohibits activities restricting interstate commerce and competition in the marketplace, essentially outlawing corporate monopolies. It’s the cornerstone of US antitrust legislation, leading to the federal government’s breakup of late 19th century Gilded Age industrial giants.

CNET’s Imad Khan contributed to this report.