The states and the DOJ are both investigating Google’s advertising, Search and Android businesses

There are other less drastic measures that can be used including the use of a consent decree. This is essentially a settlement made by a company and a regulatory agency that settles a legal action without an admission of guilt. The courts use consent decrees to make sure that companies are behaving properly and following regulations. After all, breaking up a company that touches almost everyone’s lives isn’t that easy. And Google’s advertising unit is not a stand-alone business which makes it even harder for the company to jettison.

Stephen Houck, a Google advisor, was one of the government attorneys who took on Microsoft in an antitrust case 20 years ago, says, “Courts are very concerned that by ripping a company apart, it hurts consumers and makes it worse for people that don’t have the expertise to do that.” The government has broken up some monopolies in the past. In 1911 Standard Oil was broken up into 34 companies that included Esso (later Exxon), Mobil, Amoco, and Chevron. In 1982, the U.S. government broke up the Bell System into seven independent companies. That led to a convoluted series of mergers. In 1985, Southwestern Bell acquired AT&T and took over the name. The following year, AT&T bought Bellsouth. Something like this is most likely not in the cards for Google, which itself is a unit of the Alphabet Corporation.