By Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department on Monday urged a federal judge to loosen Google's grip on the search-engine market by forcing a sale of its Chrome web browser, kicking off the latest phase of a landmark antitrust case.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who ruled last year that Google has illegally maintained a monopoly in online search, has set aside three weeks to hear arguments and testimony over what remedy he should impose to restore competition.

"We're at an inflection point," Justice Department lawyer David Dahlquist told Mehta on Monday. "This court has an opportunity to remedy a monopoly that has controlled the internet for today's generation and restore competition for decades to come."

The proceeding in Washington, D.C., is a milestone in yearslong effort by U.S. antitrust enforcers to rein in Silicon Valley technology giants, and could result in new limits on Google that would help competitors such as Microsoft, which operates the Bing search engine.

The Justice Department enters the trial with momentum on its side, having won a major ruling last week in a separate antitrust case against Google relating to digital advertising tools. That decision, from a federal judge in Virginia, doesn't have any direct impact on the search case before Mehta, but lent credence to arguments that Google has stifled competition.

In court filings, the Justice Department has argued that Google should face serious consequences for its monopolist conduct: a court-ordered sale of its Chrome browser, termination of agreements that give its search engine default status on smartphones and other devices, and a requirement to provide competitors with access to data.

Google has long argued that it competed fairly to achieve its success, and has told Mehta that the Justice Department's sweeping remedies proposal will hinder innovation and harm consumers.

The Justice Department brought the case in October 2020, during the final months of President Trump's first term. At the time, it was seen as the most significant tech antitrust case since the Justice Department's yearslong fight with Microsoft in the 1990s.

More than 30 state attorneys general, from both political parties, have signed on to the case and pressed similar arguments. Dahlquist said the case's long history demonstrates that there is bipartisan opposition to Google's conduct. The Justice Department first outlined its remedies proposal in November, before Trump took office, and has largely stuck by that initial proposal.

The plaintiffs allege that Google, which controls about 90% of the global search market, has used illegal agreements to sideline its rivals and harmed consumers and advertisers in the process. A trial last year, focused just on liability, revealed that Google has paid Apple more than $20 billion a year for Google's search engine to be the default on Apple's Safari web browser.

Google has urged Mehta to craft a narrow, cautious remedy. The company says it is willing to "loosen" its agreements with Apple and others so that competing search engines can get better placement on mobile devices. But it opposes most of the government's proposals, saying they would throw up obstacles to future innovation.

Google faces more competition than ever because of new artificial-intelligence companies such as OpenAI, Google lawyer John Schmidtlein said in his opening statement on Monday.

Schmidtlein called the government's remedies proposal a "wish list" for Google competitors.

"This collection of overreaching remedies will harm competition, not promote it," Schmidtlein said.

Write to Jan Wolfe at jan.wolfe@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 21, 2025 13:50 ET (17:50 GMT)

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