The Ministry of Justice is preparing an antitrust investigation on Google

The US Department of Justice is preparing an antitrust investigation over Google's subsidiary Alphabet, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The effort will concern the Web search and other parts of Google, says the report.

The report comes amidst discussions between politicians and the public over whether large technology companies should be divorced. The government's crackdown on Alphabet for research could touch the heart of one of the world's most highly regarded publicly traded companies.

Alphabet has achieved a turnover of $ 136.8 billion in 2018, of which 85% comes from advertising. According to NetMarketShare, Google controls more than 70% of the search engine market.

Google has faced antitrust pressure in the past.

In 2013, Google announced that it would change certain practices after agreeing to a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission. The FTC feared that Google's commercial practices would inhibit competition

In 2010, the European company received an antitrust complaint from the European Commission regarding the ranking of search results and shopping ads. Google then imposed a fine of 2.7 billion dollars in 2017, according to the latest annual report of Alphabet. In 2016, the EC is complaining about practices related to Google's Android operating system, resulting in a charge of $ 5.1 billion in 2018.

And in March, the European Union condemned Google to pay around $ 1.7 billion because of its advertising behavior.

Recently, Google has also been under political pressure in the United States.

President Trump has criticized major technologies, including accusing Google of bias in its research results. In March, Trump tweeted accusations that Google's YouTube and Twitter favored his Democratic opponents over him and the Republicans.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, who announced her bid for the 2020 presidency in December, insisted on the dissolution of technology companies such as Google. In a mbad-circulation article published on Medium in March, Warren said she was interested in appointing regulators who would be interested in canceling what she called "anti-competitive mergers," including DoubleClick, Nest and Waze, from Google.

"Current antitrust laws allow federal regulators to split mergers that reduce competition," Warren said.

Google would not be the first US technology company to be scrutinized by the Department of Justice. In 1998, this agency opened an important antitrust case against Microsoft, which led to several rules that the company had to follow for years.

The Department of Justice has made no comment. Google did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

Read the full Wall Street Journal report here.

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