Sources say the U.S. Department of Justice is considering breaking up Google or requiring it to sell Android

This site reported on August 14 that the U.S. Department of Justice is considering a historic decision: to break up the Google business empire. This comes after a federal judge ruled that the tech giant had an illegal monopoly in online searches.

According to Bloomberg, lawyers for the Department of Justice may ask Judge Amit Mehta to order Google to sell part of its business. Among the assets that may be divested include the Android operating system, Chrome browser and advertising platform AdWords. The possibility of selling Android, the world's most widely used operating system, has sparked the most intense discussions among Justice Department lawyers, sources said.

In addition to a breakup, the Justice Department is also considering other, milder options, such as requiring Google to share data with rival search engines like DuckDuckGo and Microsoft's Bing. In addition, they may seek to impose restrictions on Google's artificial intelligence products to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage. For example, the Justice Department could ask Mehta to prohibit Google from requiring the company to allow it to "crawl" content in exchange for appearing in search results.

Last week, Judge Mehta issued a landmark ruling that Google is a monopoly that ensures its search engine becomes the dominant choice for most smartphones by paying partners like Apple, Samsung, and AT&T billions of dollars The default search engine on your phone. The judge ruled that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act and held a monopoly in the market for general search services and general text advertising.

The U.S. Department of Justice is expected to ask Judge Mehta to prohibit Google from providing a default search engine agreement in the future.

Google shares fell more than 1% after hours on Tuesday. If the proposal to break up Google does occur, it would be the first such proposal from the U.S. federal government in more than 20 years. The U.S. Justice Department won an antitrust case against Microsoft but abandoned plans to break up the company in 2001.

The U.S. Department of Justice will outline its proposed remedies in the second round of antitrust trials starting in September.

Google has said it plans to appeal Mehta's ruling. Kent Walker, the company's president of global affairs, said in a statement last week: "This decision recognizes that Google provides the best search engine, but believes that we should not provide it lightly."

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