00:00 Speaker A
Now time for some of today’s trending tickers. Shares of Alphabet are dropping. President Trump’s Justice Department is asking a federal judge to force a sell off of Alphabet’s Chrome browser. For more, we’re bringing in Yahoo Finance senior legal reporter, Alexis Keenan. And of course, this is a continuation of an action that the Biden administration had taken, right?
00:22 Alexis Keenan
Yeah, it started with Trump, got handed over and prosecuted and tried under Biden. And now we’re back to Trump again. So, uh, Google here not getting helped any more today in the sell off with uh the consequences for the company for being held an illegal monopolist in two search markets, getting closer to becoming a reality on Friday. The new Trump Department of Justice and Google filed these dueling proposals on how the judge, these are suggestions for the judge to restore competition in those two markets. Hearings for that get underway in April at the end of the month and the beginning of May. Now, the new DOJ, it did keep in place some core requirements from the Biden administration. So we’re waiting to see what the differences might be here. So what the DOJ under Trump still wants is to end those default search contracts that gave mobile phone operators, laptop creators, mobile device creators, uh the ability to distribute Google search through these contracts where Google search would be the default on those devices. Also, though, big one here, uh the Trump Justice Department still wanting to go ahead and push for divestment of Google’s Chrome browser. Uh that is also uh in addition to forcing Google to share some search data. Um what has changed though between these two administrations, Julie, is that the DOJ has dropped a request for Google to divest its investments in AI companies, instead opting for a notice requirement where Google would have to put on the table its proposed AI uh acquisitions and then let federal uh federal officials know about that. Also changing, uh not asking Google to divest Android. Now the Biden administration had wanted to make this contingent uh that Google be required to divest Android if it kind of didn’t play by the rules that the department was planning on setting out. Also, there’s one more requirement in there, it’s kind of an alteration of what the Biden administration has set forth. Now with the Trump’s uh DOJ wanting to force Google um to change the way it syndicates ads. There were some caps that Google had on the way that third parties would run those text ads that you see and other ads on their websites and kind of getting a little bit softer touch there, um wanting to just have more transparency in that process. But the attorneys that I’ve been talking to, the anti-trust lawyers, they tell me that the judge is probably relieved that he doesn’t have to address these AI concerns given that the evolution of the technology is so rapid. But here’s the other kicker, both sides can appeal every part of this case. That means the fundamental decision that came out of the district court, uh the federal district court in DC and also the remedies. So no matter what happens, this is going to continue on for quite some time.
03:55 Speaker A
Yeah, but there were some investors who thought, you know what, new administration, maybe this trick case could just kind of go away, but doesn’t sound like it. Thank you, Alexis, appreciate it.