The US government has said it may ask a judge to force Alphabet’s Google to divest parts of its business, such as its Chrome browser and Android operating system, in order to eliminate its monopoly in online search.

In a landmark case in August 2024, the US district court found Google liable for maintaining monopolies in US general search services and US general search text advertising.

Specifically, the court found two violations as a result of Google’s illegal maintenance of monopolies in those two separate markets.

With Amit Mehta, the judge who presided over the case, branding the tech giant a “monopolist”, the Department of Justice has now said it is “considering behavioural and structural remedies” to end Google’s monopoly in search.

In its court filing on Tuesday, the department identified four areas that its remedies framework for Google needed to address: search distribution and revenue sharing; generation and display of search results; advertising scale and monetisation; and gathering...