When the United States gets tough, it really doesn't spare even its own people. Google is not Microsoft; back then, Microsoft was almost broken up. If Microsoft had been split up at that time, perhaps its global market influence would have significantly declined.

As early as May 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice and 18 states, along with the District of Columbia, jointly filed six antitrust charges against Microsoft. This case caused a global sensation and became the well-deserved "trial of the century."

The complex legal and economic issues such as "what constitutes a monopoly," "what constitutes unfair competition," "what constitutes fraudulent behavior," and "why a company with only monopolistic intentions but no monopolistic actions can also be prosecuted" were actually unclear to the federal courts and Congress.

Why wasn't Microsoft eventually broken up? It's because Microsoft's monopoly is different from traditional monopolies; it is a natural monopoly, which is quite different from traditional monopolies. To put it simply, Microsoft set the industry standards.

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Today, the U.S. Department of Justice has released a message that the United States is preparing to dismantle Google.

According to media reports, 24 years later, the U.S. Department of Justice has published a document proposing a series of sanctions against Google to ensure that it no longer monopolizes the search engine market. These proposals include potentially terminating exclusive agreements signed by Google with companies such as Apple and Samsung, and prohibiting certain types of data tracking; it may require forcing Google's parent company Alphabet to divest some businesses, such as Chrome, the Android operating system, and the AdWords advertising platform. Google responded that the aforementioned proposals are very aggressive and far exceed the specific legal issues of the search monopoly lawsuit.

Google requires device manufacturers to pre-install Google Search and Chrome on phones when they are shipped to access the Play Store and other Google applications and services. If the U.S. Department of Justice proceeds with the breakup plan, Google is most likely to be stripped of the Android operating system and Chrome.

In addition to direct breakups, the Department of Justice is also considering requiring Google to share data with competitors' search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Microsoft's Bing to promote market competition.At this moment, Google is gradually and quietly playing the dual roles of buyer and seller in the advertising market, and is increasingly able to control everything, including advertisers and publishers, as well as all user data for ad and publishing tracking.

Splitting may not necessarily be achieved, but it also does not mean that Google can rest easy. Today's Google needs to worry more about being left behind by competitors, being abandoned by users, and being eliminated by the market.

To put it bluntly, both China and the United States are developing AI technology. The United States, at most, imposes fines on Google because Google is also quite strong in the field of AI technology, and the United States obviously will not give up its chips.

The United States has an early accumulation in the field of artificial intelligence, fast research and development speed, and well-established data facilities. Companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have a large amount of data.

The development of AI is roughly determined by hardware (mainly referring to chips), data, and application scenarios. Hardware, that is, chips, is still a priority for the United States at present.