A court found Google responsible for illegally monopolizing online searches, and its solutions are supposed to reset the market, allowing rivals to compete fairly. Google (obviously) does not agree that it is managing a monopoly, but it can appeal first That underlying conclusion is that you are trying to limit the consequences if you lose.
Google's justification is that the search agreements were at the center of the case, so they are what a court should target. Under the proposal, Google would not be able to strike deals with Android phone makers that require adding mobile search in exchange for access to other Google apps. It couldn't require phone makers to exclude rival search engines or third-party browsers. Browser companies like Mozilla would be given more flexibility to set rival search engines as defaults.
Perhaps the biggest concession is that this deal would specifically end Google's multibillion-dollar search deal with Apple. It would prohibit Google from entering into agreements that make Google Search the default engine for any “Apple proprietary feature or functionality, including Siri and Spotlight” in the US, unless the agreement allows Apple to choose a default search engine. different in your browser annually and “expressly”. allows you to promote other search engines.
And in a nod to some Justice Department concerns about Google blocking rival ai-powered search tools and chatbots, Google proposes that it should not be allowed to require phone makers to add its Gemini mobile app Assistant to access other Google offers.
The government has proposed ten years of restrictions, but Google's counterproposal is only three: it argues that nothing more is necessary because “the pace of innovation in search has been extraordinary” and to regulate a “rapidly changing industry” like search would slow down innovation.
If the court accepts Google's simplified proposal versus the Justice Department's, the company could lose some lucrative or strategically advantageous deals, but its business would remain intact. You wouldn't have to take out your Chrome browser or have the threat of an Android divestment order hanging over you. And it wouldn't need to share many of the underlying signals that help it figure out how to deliver useful search results, so that its rivals can catch up and serve as a real competitive pressure, as the Justice Department hopes.
Both Google's and the Justice Department's proposals are essentially starting points from which the judge can work. But Google is betting that it might find it easier to sell a simple proposition that addresses a specific, important problem raised in the test. It is positioning the government's proposals as extreme and going beyond the scope of the judge's earlier decision, perhaps (Google will probably tell the court) even in a way that could be overturned on appeal.
This has not gone down well with at least one of Google's rivals, the search engine company DuckDuckGo. “Google's proposal attempts to maintain the status quo and change as little as possible,” spokesperson Kamyl Bazbaz said in a statement. Both sides will argue their case in federal court in Washington, DC beginning April 22.
