As US tech giant Alphabet (GOOGL.US) faces defeat in its biggest antitrust challenge yet—with a US judge ruling in 2024 that it illegally monopolized the search engine market—the tech behemoth now confronts the possibility of being forced to divest core business units. The US government has expressed its desire for Alphabet to publicly sell its Chrome web browser business to the market and license its search data to competitors—marking what would become the largest forced breakup of a US company since telecommunications giant AT&T Inc was dismantled in 1984.

US District Judge Amit Mehta is expected to soon issue a final ruling report, proposing significant remedial measures to address Alphabet's monopolistic practices. In anticipation of this decision, artificial intelligence application leaders OpenAI and Perplexity AI have already expressed strong interest in acquiring Alphabet's Chrome business. Chrome, alongside the open-source Chromium software product line, represents the most fundamental way people access the internet on personal computers.

What are the charges against Alphabet? The US Department of Justice and state attorneys general allege that Alphabet's search engine controls nearly 90% of online search and query volume, and has paid billions of dollars through agreements with tech industry competitors, smartphone manufacturers, and wireless carriers to maintain its absolute monopoly in the search market. In exchange for advertising revenue sharing, tech giants including Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. agreed to set Alphabet as the default option on browsers and mobile devices.

Plaintiffs claim these deals have locked up the most critical access points to the internet, preventing competitive search engines like DuckDuckGo or Microsoft Corp.'s Bing from obtaining the data scale needed to improve online search products and challenge Alphabet's monopolistic position.

Judge Mehta's ruling (US District Judge for the District of Columbia) showed that the $26 billion Alphabet paid to other tech companies to make its search engine the default option across numerous platforms effectively prevented any other competitor from succeeding in the search engine market. Mehta's decision came after a 10-week trial in 2023—the first time in over two decades that the federal government faced off against a US tech giant in court over monopoly charges.

Judge Mehta determined that Alphabet illegally monopolized both the general search engine services market and the search text advertising market (ads appearing at the top of search results pages). In his ruling statement, the judge said: "Alphabet's distribution agreements exclude a significant portion of the general search engine services market, harming competitors' competitive opportunities." He also found that due to its monopolistic position, Alphabet could raise pricing rules for text advertising services without constraint.

What remedies are antitrust enforcers seeking? The US Department of Justice and a group of state governments have proposed a significant plan to force the sale of Alphabet's Chrome browser business. The proposal would prohibit Alphabet from entering into the type of exclusive agreements at the core of this case. For existing agreements, the company would be required to provide options to smartphone manufacturers and wireless carriers, allowing them to present users with a "search engine choice screen."

The Justice Department and states say Alphabet should be required to license its foundational and underlying "click and query" data as well as its search results data to potential competitors to help them improve their products. As part of this licensing agreement proposal, they also jointly proposed that Alphabet must include all content from its own businesses (such as YouTube) that incorporates its search engine services.

According to media reports, Judge Mehta previously held a three-week trial in April and May 2025 to review all the above proposals.

What does Alphabet say? The tech giant states it plans to appeal the judge's ruling on its illegal monopolization of the search market, which could delay the implementation of remedial measures by months or even years. The company also says it plans to challenge any ruling requiring the divestiture of the Chrome browser business and has proposed a more narrowly defined set of antitrust remedies—modifying its default search engine agreements with Apple and Mozilla to completely open the search market to competitors.

This would also make it easier for smartphone manufacturers like Samsung Electronics to use Alphabet's Android operating system without having to set Alphabet search as the default search engine.

An Alphabet spokesperson recently stated that the Justice Department's breakup and antitrust remedy proposals would harm Americans' privacy and security, hinder Alphabet's investments in artificial intelligence, and hurt companies like Mozilla—which heavily relies on the substantial revenue from Alphabet's payments for setting its search engine as Firefox browser's default option.

For Alphabet, the Chrome web browser business serves as the "core foundation" for the company's robust digital advertising revenue and the major expansion of Alphabet's AI application ecosystem AI Gemini, especially as the default browser in user ecosystems like Apple's, bringing Alphabet continuously expanding traffic data.

Alphabet's AI application business is also leveraging Google search engine's near-monopolistic 90% market share for continued major expansion. Its Gemini generative AI application ecosystem has over 450 million monthly active users, with daily requests growing more than 50% compared to the first quarter. AI application-level inference computing demand continues to surge dramatically, processing over 98 trillion tokens monthly in July, doubling from 48 trillion in May. From the full-stack layout of underlying AI infrastructure centered on Alphabet TPUs and NVIDIA AI GPUs to the top-level Gemini AI application ecosystem, this ensures Alphabet's differentiated advantages in AI competition.

What is antitrust law? Why does Alphabet continue to face difficulties? Its core purpose is to protect competitive activity in business. In the United States, "growing large and strong" does not equate to illegality; achieving monopolistic position through superior products or better management services is viewed as a reward for market success. However, monopolists taking predatory measures to prevent competitors that might threaten their dominant position violates US antitrust law, which is why the US judge deemed Alphabet in violation of antitrust law.

Any attempt or even intent to illegally maintain monopolistic position falls within the "fair game" strike range of antitrust enforcers and may result in penalties or forced breakup.