Google Antitrust Case: US Judge will Not Delay Trial for DoJ Switch to Trump Administration

A trial on the US Department of Justice's proposals to diminish Google's dominance in online search will not be delayed to give Trump administration officials more time to revise the request, the judge overseeing the case said recently. The DOJ has proposed forcing Alphabet's Google to sell its Chrome browser, and potentially the Android mobile operating system, to take away distribution points for Google search. President-elect Donald Trump expressed skepticism about a Google breakup in October.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington said he would not move the trial, scheduled for April, in the event that DOJ officials appointed by Trump intend to revise the proposals.

"If there is going to be a re-evaluation of the remedies that are being requested, it needs to be done quickly," the judge said at a hearing. The DOJ sued Google in 2020, during Trump's first term. Mehta ruled in August that Google holds an illegal monopoly in online search and related advertising. The DOJ under U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed not only to make Google sell the world's most widely used Web browser, but also to share data and search results with rivals.

The wide-ranging proposal also seeks to prohibit Google to from buying or investing in search rivals, query-based artificial intelligence products or advertising technology.

Google has called the proposals "staggering," and said they would harm American competitiveness.

How artificial intelligence affects the landscape for online search is expected to be a key theme at the trial. Prosecutors have said they plan to call witnesses from ChatGPT creator OpenAI, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity, Microsoft and Meta Platforms. 

Notably, the development comes a day after the company proposed changes a slew of changes to its search results in the European Union in a bid to avoid fines under the region's Digital Markets Act. The changes proposed by Google in the EU include inclusion of new ad units for comparison sites, support for formats that allow comparison sites and suppliers to show more information about what is on their websites and ' allow users to choose between results that take them to comparison sites and results that take them directly to supplier websites when they are searching for products, restaurants, flights or hotels', Google wrote.