Justice Department officials are considering a bid to break up Alphabet, the parent company of Google, according to a new report from Bloomberg News.
This comes a week after a landmark ruling from a federal judge that Google holds an illegal monopoly over the search engine business, due to distribution contracts with device manufacturers that make it the "default" search option on many devices.
This has a far-reaching impact, as advertisers depend on Google for traffic and tweaks to its algorithm can make or break websites and shape their content.
The Justice Department has not tried to break up a corporation for holding an illegal monopoly since a Microsoft case in the late 1990s, which was ultimately unsuccessful — and it would constitute the largest breakup since AT&T's in the 1980s.
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There are other options if the DOJ decides not to take this step, said the report. Those options "include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations. Regardless, the government will likely seek a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of its case against Google."
Alphabet plans to appeal the court decision, arguing that it does not hold a monopoly and that its market dominance is a result of superior products, rather than anticompetitive practices.
