Kent Walker, President, Global Affairs & Chief Legal Officer, Google & Alphabet, posted: “DOJ’s staggering proposal would hurt consumers and American’s global technology leadership”
As part of its lawsuit over how we distribute Search, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) tonight filed a staggering proposal that seeks dramatic changes to Google services.
DOJ had a chance to propose remedies related to the issue in this case: search distribution agreements with Apple, Mozilla, smartphone OEMs, and wireless carriers.
Instead, DOJ chose to push a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership. DOJ’s widely overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court’s decision. It would break a range of Google products — even beyond Search — that people live and find helpful in their everyday lives.
This extreme proposal would:
Endanger the security and privacy of millions of Americans, and undermine the quality of products people love, by forcing he sale of Chrome and potentially Android.
Require disclosure to unknown foreign and domestic companies of not just Google’s innovations and results, but even more troubling, Americans’ personal search queries.
Chill our investment in artificial intelligence, perhaps the most important innovation of our time, where Google plays a leading role.
Hurt innovative services, like Mozilla’s Firefox, whose businesses depend on charging Google for Search placement.
Deliberately hobble people’s ability to access Google Search.
Mandate government micromanagement of Google Search and other technologies by appointing a “Technical Committee” with enormous power of your online experience.
Endanger the security and privacy of millions of Americans, and undermine the quality of products people love, by forcing he sale of Chrome and potentially Android.
Require disclosure to unknown foreign and domestic companies of not just Google’s innovations and results, but even more troubling, Americans’ personal search queries.
Chill our investment in artificial intelligence, perhaps the most important innovation of our time, where Google plays a leading role.
Hurt innovative services, like Mozilla’s Firefox, whose businesses depend on charging Google for Search placement.
Deliberately hobble people’s ability to access Google Search.
Mandate government micromanagement of Google Search and other technologies by appointing a “Technical Committee” with enormous power of your online experience.
The Guardian reported: The US Department of Justice has proposed a far-reaching overhaul of Google’s structure and business practices, including the sale of its Crome browser, in a bid to end is monopoly on internet search.
The DOJ proposals follow a landmark court ruling in August in which a federal judge ruled that Google maintained an illegal monopoly over search services.
The proposals filed to a Washington federal court include the forced sale of the Crome browser and a five-year ban from entering the browser market; a block on paying third parties such as Apple to make Google the default search engine on their products; and divestment of the Android mobile operation system if the initial proposals do not work.
ArsTechnica reported: Yesterday, the US Department of Justice filed its proposed final judgement, officially recommending a broad range of remedies to end Google’s search monopoly.
Predictably, Google is not happy with the DOJ’s plan, which require the company to sell its Crome browser. It also retains the option of forcing Google to divest Android if competition doesn’t increase the behavioral remedies, including bans on exclusive default deals with other browsers and device makers.
Additionally, Google is prohibited from building any new browsers and must fund an education campaign that shows people how to switch search engines and potentially even pays people to switch.
Google may also be restricted from using its data scale advantage to benefit its AI products.
In my opinion, it appears that Google is trying very hard to blame the Department of Justice for the decisions that the DOJ made. It is clear that Google is not interested in making changes.