Ryan Knappenberger reports:
The Federal Trade Commission, news publishers and a bipartisan coalition of former antitrust enforcers, among others, filed amicus briefs on Monday in the landmark antitrust trial over Google’s internet search monopoly to push for their preferred remedy.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta finished hearing witness testimony in the remedy phase of the trial on Friday and scheduled closing arguments for May 29, with an ultimate decision expected in August.
The Barack Obama appointee granted motions from 17 interested parties — including economics and law professors, Google employee unions, the Chamber of Progress, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, the American Economic Liberties Project, Anthropic and more — to file amicus briefs.
The FTC lent its support for the Justice Department’s proposal that Mehta order the divestiture of Google’s Chrome browser and potentially Android, bar multibillion-dollar deals to make its search engine the default option on other browsers and syndicate its search index to help rival engines match Google’s quality.
Read more at Courthouse News.