Google’s CEO responds to US antitrust charges against company

• Google plans to appeal a federal judge’s antitrust ruling, CEO Sundar Pichai said.
• DOJ remedies could force Google to break up or reorganize, impacting other Big Tech firms.
• The appeals process could make the case take years to resolve.

Google is preparing for a yearslong fight to appeal a federal judge’s antitrust ruling against the company.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai appeared on Bloomberg’s “The David Rubenstein Show,” where he spoke publicly about Google’s search engine antitrust case for the first time since Department of Justice prosecutors submitted their proposed remedies.

“With our scale and size, I think scrutiny is inevitable,” Pichai told host David Rubenstein.

Pichai made it clear that Google disagrees with US District Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling.

“We’re still in the middle of the remedies phase, and we will appeal, and this process will likely take many years,” Pichai said.

The Google CEO added that Mehta’s ruling, which called Google a “monopolist,” points out the company’s success through innovation and that competitors “acknowledge that we are the best search engine in the world.”

On Monday, federal prosecutors suggested the government will propose “behavioral and structural remedies,” which, if enacted, could force Google to break up or do a lot of reorganizing.

Prosecutors are expected to give the court a final proposed judgment in November and finish any revisions by March.

Ultimately, Mehta will decide which orders Google must follow in order to restore competition to the search market, but the company will appeal.

The Google antitrust case is one of the biggest of the last 30 years and has been closely watched by other Big Tech giants.