The Google Breakup Trial Balloon
Poor Lee-Anne Mulholland. For the second time in three days, Google's Vice President of Regulatory Affairs has had to publish a piece on the company blog countering court proceedings that are coming fast and furious for the $2T company. The two cases are quite different, as the first is the result of a lawsuit by another company, Epic Games, to try to fundamentally change the Play Store. This one is about the US government going after Google's search business. (And, of course, there's a third one, where the same government is going after Google's advertising business – the expensive jewels. And there are various state cases as well. Mulholland better have those blogging fingers ready...)
Unlike the Epic case, today's news isn't a ruling but a requested framework for how the government might think about remedies for that first antitrust case which Google lost. It reads like you might expect in negotiating 101: start with the biggest ask. The DoJ is basically putting every option on the table, including the big one: a breakup of Google itself into smaller parts.