Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Any hopes from Google that the new Trump administration would help its longtime antitrust case before the Justice Department were dashed Friday.
The big picture: The DOJ continues to demand a break up of Google, despite being under new leadership.
- Friday's DOJ filing, sticking closely to a November 2024 proposal, said it still wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser and to stop paying partners Apple and Mozilla for preferential treatment of the Google search engine.
- It also calls for Google to notify the government when it plans to partner with a company that competes with it for search ads.
Why it matters: The filing illustrates that currying favor with Trump won't make a difference in the courts.
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai was one of the tech billionaires flanking President Trump at his inauguration, with the company donating $1 million to his inauguration fund.
Last year, Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled Google illegally maintained a monopoly over online search engines through paid arrangements with web browsers and smartphone makers.
- The Friday filing narrowed one previous request, asking Google to notify of future AI investments but not asking for divestment of current ones.
What they're saying: "Through its sheer size and unrestricted power, Google has robbed consumers and businesses of a fundamental promise owed to the public—their right to choose among competing services," a DOJ statement reads.
- "Google's illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that—no matter what occurs—Google always wins."
The other side: "DOJ's sweeping proposals continue to go miles beyond the Court's decision, and would harm America's consumers, economy and national security," Google spokesperson Peter Schottenfels said in statement.
- Google, for its part, has proposed more flexible default browser and smartphone agreements.
Between the lines: As long as tech antitrust cases percolate through U.S. government, Trump and his agency heads have enormous leverage over these companies and their CEOs.
- A friendly White House meeting or a tech photo op doesn't mean much if Trump's DOJ is demanding the company change how it fundamentally does business.
Flashback: It's been five years since this case was originally filed, and two years since the trial kicked off.
- The tech landscape has changed rapidly, with AI shaking up competition and policy priorities shifting. But the core government arguments at the heart of this case haven't moved much.
- That's bad news for Google, which hoped to use the ever-changing environment to its advantage.
All the donating and changing of fact-checking and eliminating DEI policies to appeal to Trump won't matter to tech firms like Google when faced with a devastating antitrust ruling from a case that managed to survive from Trump 1 to Biden to Trump 2.
- FTC chair Andrew Ferguson and FCC chair Brendan Carr have tech in their crosshairs as well, though their reasons for that diverge from Democratic predecessors, as we previously reported.
The intrigue: All of this is occurring as Gail Slater, Trump's pick to lead the DOJ's antitrust division, awaits confirmation.
- Slater, a previous Trump White House tech adviser who is known to be skeptical of tech and most recently worked as policy adviser for Vice President Vance on Capitol Hill, is unlikely to oppose the DOJ's continued direction in this case.
What's next: The judge is scheduled to hear arguments over proposed remedies in April.
