The Contradictions in the DOJ’s Google Breakup Idea

Who says investors don’t care about Google’s antitrust woes? The stock dropped as much as 3.9% on Wednesday in the wake of reports that the government might seek “a breakup” of the company as the penalty for last week’s antitrust verdict, most likely through the forced divestiture of Android or Chrome.

Those reports shouldn’t have been surprising: in a report last Friday, we cited antitrust lawyers predicting that the government would almost certainly ask the court to impose what are called “structural remedies” against Google, such as selling Android, rather than just “behavioral” changes affecting Google’s partnerships with Apple. Here’s a question, though: Are the folks at the Justice Department working on the Google case talking to their colleagues who are working on the antitrust lawsuit against Apple?