October 9th saw new developments in the Google monopoly case.

The media reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is formally assessing whether to require Google to sell certain business divisions to alleviate its monopoly issues in the field of online search. If the news is confirmed, it will be the first large-scale antitrust breakup in U.S. history.

In the latest court documents, the U.S. Department of Justice revealed further actions in its antitrust lawsuit against Google and its parent company Alphabet.

Firstly, the Department of Justice is considering asking Judge Amit Mehta to authorize regulatory agencies to review the underlying data used in Google's search results and artificial intelligence products, and to require Google to provide relevant operational access.

Secondly, the Department of Justice is still assessing a series of behavioral and structural remedies to stop Google from using its market position in products such as Chrome, Play, and Android to provide unfair advantages to its search engine and related products and services.

Google has been in a long tug-of-war with the Department of Justice in the antitrust case. The U.S. Department of Justice's stance is that Google has obtained market size and data advantages through illegal distribution agreements with other technology companies, making its search engine the default choice for smartphones and browsers, which violates U.S. antitrust laws.

In addition, the Department of Justice may also require Google to allow websites to more easily opt out of its AI products and consider requiring Google to provide more information and control over ad placements in the field of search text advertising. The Department of Justice may also restrict Google's investments in competitors.

In response, Google stated that it has appealed the decision but will wait for the punitive measures to take effect before taking action.

Google has recently been hit with a double whammy. In addition to the decision by the U.S. Department of Justice, two days ago, U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco also ordered Google to reform its mobile application business.

The judge's main orders are threefold: First, to open the Google Play Store, allowing Android applications to be obtained from competitors' sources; second, not to prohibit in-app payments within three years, and must allow users to download competitive third-party Android application platforms or stores; third, to restrict Google's payments to device manufacturers for pre-installing its app store and to limit sharing of revenue generated from the Play Store with other app distributors.

On August 13, 2020, Epic Games initiated a lawsuit against Google and Apple, aiming to evade the 30% in-app purchase revenue share imposed by Google and Apple in its popular game "Fortnite." In response, Google and Apple quickly took action to remove "Fortnite" from their respective app stores, which triggered the #FreeFortnite movement and led to two lawsuits against the two companies for allegedly illegally monopolizing the market.

Among them, Apple won the lawsuit, and the Supreme Court rejected Epic's final appeal in January of this year. However, in the Google case, Epic repeatedly proved that Google has unfair treatment of developers and intentionally concealed facts. In December last year, the jury unanimously ruled that the Google Play Store and Google Play billing services constituted illegal monopolistic behavior. In October, the San Francisco court ruled against Google.

In the second quarter of this year, Google's parent company Alphabet's revenue was $84.742 billion, a 14% increase from the same period last year's $74.604 billion; net profit was $23.619 billion, a 29% increase from the same period last year's $18.368 billion. Both revenue and net profit exceeded market expectations. In terms of specific businesses, Google's advertising business is the main support, with total revenue of $64.616 billion, an 11% increase from the same period last year's $58.143 billion.