Washington.- Former President Donald J. Trump, whose administration sued Google over allegations that it violated antitrust law, indicated that he will not bankrupt the company if he regains the presidency, describing it as a bulwark against China’s technological ambitions.
“China is afraid of Google,” Trump said when speaking Tuesday at an event with Bloomberg News during a meeting at the Economic Club of Chicago.
He questioned whether breaking up with that corporation “could destroy the company,” although he added that he was not a fan of Google.
“What you can do without breaking it is make sure it’s fairer,” Trump said.
The statements are an indication of a different strategy by the former president regarding anti-trust actions against Google, which makes it the most popular search engine in the world.
Just last month, Trump said he would criminally prosecute Google for publishing “bad stories” about him.
A federal judge issued a landmark ruling in August that the company has illegally maintained a monopoly on search.
The Justice Department said last week that it was considering making an argument to that judge that Google should be put into bankruptcy as punishment.
Google declined to comment on Trump’s remarks. He has argued that a break could affect U.S. interests in the heated geopolitical competition with China over dominance in areas such as artificial intelligence, a point Trump echoed on Tuesday.
“It’s a dangerous thing because we want to have big companies and we don’t want China to have them,” he said.
The Justice Department’s antitrust investigation into Google began during Trump’s term in 2019.
In 2020, weeks before the presidential election, the agency sued the company, arguing that it had illegally maintained a monopoly in the online search business by paying companies like Apple and Samsung to be the automatic search engine in smartphones and in web browsers.
Although Trump did not specify how he would approach that controversial question about what to do with Google, he said the company’s search engine was rigged because it only featured negative stories about him and that he needed to do “something.”
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