US federal authorities intend to limit the influence of Google in the online search market as part of an ongoing antitrust investigation against the technology giant. Gabriel Weinberg, chief executive of the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo, announced this.
Weinberg said his company spoke with government regulators and the US Department of Justice a few weeks ago. The meetings showed that officials are interested in Google offering consumers alternatives to its own search engine on Android devices and in the Chrome browser.
Weinberg's comments confirm that the main target of the antitrust investigation is Google's core business of online search. The US Department of Justice and the authorities of most US states have been studying Google's activities in the online advertising market for about a year. A class-action lawsuit has recently begun accusing the tech giant of illegally collecting sensitive user data. This could set off one of the biggest antitrust cases in US history.
Google is the most popular search engine in the US, while Microsoft Bing, DuckDuckGo and other alternatives are less common. The search engine is free for consumers, but Google charges thousands of companies to host advertising content. According to available data, last year this business brought the corporation about $100 billion in revenue.
In the past, the US Federal Trade Commission has addressed the issue of Google's dominance of the online advertising market. However, this investigation was terminated in 2013 after the company agreed to change its own policy in this segment. Despite this, some US officials continue to be convinced that a new antitrust investigation should be carried out against Google.
"We continue to participate in investigations by the Department of Justice and the Attorney General, and we have no new comments or statements on this matter," a Google spokesperson said.
Source: 3dnews.ru