Possibility of breakup triggering reorganizations and layoffs.
It will have to sell Chrome
https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-will-still-have-to-break-up-its-business-the-justice-department-said-150000739.html
Probably, a couple million in the right pockets can make this go away.
It’s not hard but it’s expensive. In this case, 100M expensive:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-reaches-agreement-with-milbank-law-firm-2025-04-02/
An alternative would be to extort back. Perhaps the gmail accounts of Hegseth and Waltz would be helpful here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/02/michael-waltz-gmail-signal-national-security
I’d think that suppressing the chance of additional embarrassment due to the content of those emails, which could mysteriously leak, should be worth something.
See? It’s not so hard:
Fear and resignation after ‘world’s most powerful company’ pays Trump a $100 billion ‘protection fee’
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/13/tech/taiwan-tsmc-us-investment-reactions-intl-hnk/index.html
They will split off chrome this year and then android a year or two later.
Elon knows how to work it - with his $100M donation yesterday.
With the changes in Google culture over the past ten years and the neutering of corrupt practices regulations, this should be a no-brainer for Alphabet at this point.
Yeah, a few million can go a long way in the right hands. Must be nice to be a megacorp that can buy a tariff carve-out or get the judicial dogs called off.
There have been calls to break up big tech since the late 90s.
Both parties make such calls as a distraction. Yes, both of them.
Google isn't going to be broken up. Will it do d-mb sh-t like voluntarily sell things, yes.