The future of Google LLC is up in the air amid a high-stakes courtroom battle that kicked off today, beginning three weeks of hearings to determine how it’s punished for using its revolutionary search engine to establish an illegal monopoly.

The proceedings, known as a “remedy hearing,” are likely to hear from a parade of high-profile witnesses, including Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google and its parent Alphabet Inc.

“This is a moment in time, we’re at an inflection point,” said Justice Department attorney David Dahlquist. “Will we abandon the search market and surrender them to control of the monopolists or will we let competition prevail and give choice to future generations?”

The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal judge to implement a radical solution that would see Google banned from striking multibillion-dollar deals with technology companies such as Apple Inc. that protect its search engine from competition. It’s also asking that Google be forced to share valuable user data with rival search companies and sell its popular web browser Chrome.

In his opening statement, Google’s attorney John Schmidtlein argued for a lesser punishment, saying that the government’s heavy-handed proposals will simply reward lesser rivals with inferior search products, without increasing competition for consumers. “Google won its place in the market fair and square,” Schmidtlein insisted.

Google’s day of reckoning is fast approaching, almost four-and-a-half years after the DOJ filed its landmark lawsuit against the company, accusing it of abusing its position as the gateway to the internet by stifling competition and innovation.

The case ultimately went to trial in 2023, and last year U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google had made anticompetitive deals to ensure Google Search was effectively the default portal for seeking digital information on personal computers, iPhones, Android smartphones and other popular devices.

Google, which was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a Silicon Valley garage back in 1998, has long since established itself as the world’s No. 1 search engine. It has expanded far beyond web search, becoming a powerhouse in data centers, smartphone software, web browsing, digital maps, online shopping, video, email and more. That’s why the DOJ believes radical measures must be taken to break Google’s illegal monopoly on search.

“Google’s illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that — no matter what occurs — Google always wins,” the DOJ wrote in documents that outline its suggestions. “The American people are forced to accept the unbridled demands and shifting ideological preferences of an economic leviathan in return for a search engine the public may enjoy.”

In his opening statement, Dahlquist told Judge Mehta there will be a lot of testimony from the executives of leading artificial intelligence companies, such as OpenAI. While AI was barely mentioned during the original trial, he said the remedies must include provisions to ensure that Google’s AI chatbot Gemini isn’t used to strengthen the company’s monopoly on search. According to Dahlquist, AI has the potential to transform how people search the internet for information, just as Google’s original search engine did back in the late 1990s.

“We believe that Google can and will attempt to circumvent the court’s remedies if it is not included,” Dahlquist said. “Generative AI is Google’s next evolution to keep their vicious cycle spinning.”

Dahlquist’s first witness was the AI expert Greg Durret, a professor of computer science based at the University of Texas, who told the judge that Google’s domination of the search market has been a key enabler of its AI products.

Schmidtlein responded in his opening remarks that there are plenty of rival AI companies that have seen enormous growth in recent years. They are doing “just fine,” he insisted.

But not all of Google’s AI rivals agree. In a blog post published today, the AI search engine company Perplexity AI Inc. backed the DOJ’s push to ban Google’s multibillion-dollar deals to secure the default search engine status on PCs and smartphones.

“The future of search is clear, and it isn’t links for Google to sell traffic,” Perplexity said. “It’s AI that answers questions, completes tasks, and interacts with applications.”

Google has also hit back against the DOJ’s proposals to force it to hand over online search data to rival companies and sell the Chrome browser, saying this will have a negative impact on the privacy and security of U.S. consumers.

“The breadth and depth of the proposed remedies risks doing significant damage to a complex ecosystem,” Google wrote in a blog post dated April 20. “Some of the proposed remedies would imperil browser developers and jeopardize the digital security of millions of consumers.”

Judge Mehta will need to consider the DOJ’s proposals very carefully to ensure that they have the desired impact of unseating Google from its monopolistic position in the search industry, but it’s not clear if the proposed remedies will really help to do this, said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc.

“History shows us that government interference in markets rarely helps consumers and competitors,” the analyst pointed out. He cited the example of the wireless network operator AT&T Inc., which dominated the U.S. telephone services industry in the 1970s until it agreed to break up its empire of Bell Operating Companies. However, in the years that followed, consumers reported paying more to access phone services and lower satisfaction with the quality of customer service.

The breakup also did little to dislodge AT&T’s dominant position in the telecommunications industry, Mueller said. “The reason was that it requires enormous capital to build out internet and wireless networks, and only a few companies have access to that capital, resulting in consolidation yet again,” the analyst said.

Google’s hearing is the climax of America’s biggest antitrust case since the late 1990s, when rival tech firm Microsoft Corp. was sued by the DOJ for using its dominant operating system software Windows to crush its competitors.

At the end of that years-long case, a federal judge ruled Microsoft had established an illegal monopoly and ordered it to be partially broken up, though some of those remedies were overturned by an appeals court. The two parties later reached a settlement, where Microsoft agreed to modify some of its business practices.

Google has also said it’s planning to appeal Mehta’s original ruling, which branded its search engine business as an illegal monopoly. However, it cannot do this until after the remedy hearing. The proceedings are expected to close in late May, and Judge Mehta’s ruling is expected to come before Labor Day.

Rob Enderle of the analyst firm Enderle Group told SiliconANGLE it’s likely the judge will agree with the DOJ and force some kind of oversight on Google while preventing it from making any more exclusive deals to become the default search providers on new devices. It’ll likely be fined too, he believes.

“In addition, much like Microsoft was forced to share some APIs, Google will probably be required to share search information with its competitors, though I don’t think it will be forced to give up Chrome, because Microsoft was allowed to keep Internet Explorer,” the analyst said. “The trickiest issue is what to do about AI, which will likely be the bigger issue in the longer-term.”

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