The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly investigating Google for antitrust violations

Alphabet Inc.'s Google subsidiary is reportedly the target of an antitrust investigation by the US Justice Department, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The full report is behind a paywall, merely the summary notes that Google will be scrutinized for its dominating search platform and other businesses.

Google has been under a bit of pressure in this surface area, particularly in the EU. The European union has leveraged several fines confronting Alphabet Inc., including a whopping 4.34 billion euros (4.86 billion dollars) penalty for blocking rival software on its dominant Android platform. The Eu is besides investigating Alphabet Inc. for practices pertaining to local search results and Google Adsense, both of which maintain dominant positions in their corresponding markets. The European union is reportedly also investigating Google's mapping technologies, among other things, potentially preparing farther antitrust cases confronting the search giant.

In the tardily 90s, Microsoft was famously slapped by the United states of america Section of Justice and the Eu for its own antitrust violations, which led to the "Cull your browser" pop-upward in older operating systems, aslope a range of other rules Microsoft had to follow.

Microsoft fans should be no stranger to Google's generally anti-competitive beliefs over the years, refusing to permit Microsoft to develop Google apps similar YouTube for the Windows Telephone operating organisation citing ridiculous reasons. At that place'south besides reason to call up Google is arbitrarily blocking features in the Chromium version of Microsoft Edge, sporting an "Edge blacklist" that disables compatibility on seemingly on a whim.

While the back-and-forth with Microsoft has been relatively piffling, if the The states Department of Justice finds that Google has been unfairly leveraging its dominant positions in search and other businesses to stifle competition, information technology could lead to severe consequences for the tech giant.

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