The stock price of Alphabet, Google's parent company, fell following news that the U.S. Department of Justice is considering the possibility of breaking up the world's largest search engine company.
On the 14th (local time) in the New York stock market, Alphabet's stock closed at $162.03, down 2.35% from the previous day. During the session, it dropped about 4%, falling below the $160 mark before narrowing the loss. As a result, Alphabet's market capitalization, which had exceeded $2 trillion, fell to $1.982 trillion.
The decline in Alphabet's stock price is attributed to news that U.S. authorities, having won the first trial in an antitrust lawsuit against Google in the online search market, are considering the possibility of breaking up Google.
Bloomberg News, citing multiple anonymous sources the day before, reported that to prevent monopoly in the search market, the Department of Justice is considering forcibly separating Google's Android operating system (OS) and the Chrome web browser, or forcing the sale of its advertising service company, AdWords.
On the 5th, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that "Google is a monopoly," and judged that Google's payment of approximately $26 billion (about 35 trillion won) to Apple and others to set its search engine as the default on smartphone web browsers was illegal.
The court only ruled on whether Google violated antitrust laws and will decide on specific penalties later.
However, any market competition enhancement measures by the Department of Justice, including corporate breakup, must be approved by the court, and since Google has announced it will appeal, the final decision is expected to take several years.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice previously filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft (MS), which dominated the PC market with the Windows operating system in the late 1990s, attempting to break it up but was unsuccessful.
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