Google might be broken up, and it’s all because of its tight grip over search.
A federal judge ruled last week that “Google is a monopolist,” following a yearslong battle against the company by the Justice Department and state attorneys general. In the aftermath of the judge’s ruling, the Justice Department is exploring remedies that could include breaking up the company, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the deliberations. Google has said it will appeal the ruling.
At the center of the 10-week-long trial was Google’s search engine, whose dominance, paired with a successful ad business, made Google and its parent company Alphabet among the most valuable companies in the world.
Although it's not the only company with a search engine, Google has become synonymous with searching the web. Data from web-traffic analysis company Statcounter puts Google’s search engine market share at about 91% worldwide as of July. And it has maintained about a 90% market share since 2009, according to Statcounter. Its next closest competitor was Microsoft’s Bing, with just under 4% market share as of July.
Although the company disputed the figure, the Justice Department also said nearly 90% of web searches were made through Google.
View this interactive chart on Fortune.com
Google did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
The company maintains its top position over search in part by paying out billions of dollars to make Google the default search engine across devices. It paid Apple $18 billion to keep Google as the default search engine on its devices in 2021, the New York Times reported. It also pays to be the default search engine on the Mozilla Firefox web browser and Samsung devices. On top of those payments, Google has its own web browser, Google Chrome, and the Android mobile operating system, both of which make Google the default search engine across millions of devices.
If Google were broken up, as the Justice Department is reportedly considering, that could mean spinning off its Android mobile operating system or its Google Chrome web browser, Bloomberg reported. The act of breaking up Google would be a warning for other big tech giants facing antitrust suits, including Amazon, Apple, and Meta. It would also be the most significant corporate dismantling since AT&T was split up in the ‘80s.
The judge who presided over the Google case scheduled a hearing on Sept. 6 to discuss next steps with Google and the Justice Department, according to the New York Times. A spokesperson for the Justice Department said breaking up the company was not guaranteed.
“The Justice Department is evaluating the court’s decision and will assess the appropriate next steps consistent with the court's direction and the applicable legal framework for antitrust remedies. No decisions have been made at this time,” the spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.
