If you’re paying attention to more than the company’s hardware news, you’ll know that Google is in for a bumpy ride in the next few months. The search giant was recently convicted of being… well, a search giant. But illegally. A judge in the States ruled that Google has illegally monopolised the search market, in a similar manner to what happened to Microsoft and its monopoly on desktop operating systems back in the early 2000s.
In fact, the recent Google ruling holds that the company violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, the same one that Microsoft was stung with some two decades ago. There are potential changes heading in the Gmail-maker’s direction but they’ll probably take their sweet time getting there.
Google a good lawyer
The major change facing Google is the possibility that its monolithic presence will be broken up into smaller, more manageable chunks. Bloomberg reports that American regulators are considering the move, sourcing opinions from outside sources before taking the potentially cataclysmic step.
Steps being considered include: splitting off Android into a separate entity, making the search giant sell off AdWords, its advertising division closely tied into Search, and potentially splitting off Chrome as its own entity. Nothing is final yet and Google is likely to fight attempts to split off any data- or revenue-generating sections of the company. AdWords isn’t much good without ready access to the user information supplied by the rest of Google, after all.
It’s also possible that the company will defeat the attempts made to break the company apart. Microsoft famously did, agreeing to a settlement instead of having the company split in two. We can all see how well that worked out.
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Even if the search giant emerges largely unscathed, changes might come to the company from a different quarter. The ongoing Google vs Epic Games case could force the company to alter how Android users access apps. The judge in that case, James Donato, recently said of the company, “You’re going to end up paying something to make the world right after having been found to be a monopolist.”
An injunction is in the offing from Judge Donato that will dictate that Android offer more ways for users to access third-party apps beyond the Play Store. Google is, of course, opposing this planned measure. Company lawyer Glenn Pomerantz told Donato earlier this week, “Competition will be worse if you impose a duty that you have to deal with your competitor.”