Google CEO Sundar Pichai predicts the antitrust dispute will last years

“It will take some time for it to have an impact,” Pichai said in an interview for an upcoming episode of The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations“Where we believe our ability to innovate in the interests of our users is genuinely compromised, we will defend ourselves vigorously.”

Google is involved in two separate antitrust cases brought by the US Department of Justice. The US Department of Justice accuses the technology leader of illegally dominating the digital advertising market and online search. The ad trial began in court this month. In the search engine case, which Google lost, Judge Amit Mehta said he wanted to resolve the final points of contention by August.

“We definitely disagree with the ruling, but we're still in the middle of the remedial phase,” Pichai told Rubenstein, referring to the part of the legal process in which a court determines the solution to Google's market dominance. “And, you know, we're going to appeal and that process is likely to take many years.”

The administration's timeline for legal action is at odds with the particularly rapid changes in the technology industry that the Justice Department takes into account in its analysis. Google is already working hard to build a strong position in artificial intelligence, and by the time both current cases are resolved, the industry will have evolved dramatically.

It could take months for Judge Leonie Brinkema to issue a ruling in the ad trial, which alleges that Google violated antitrust laws by building a monopoly on web advertising technology. If the government wins, it will seek to break up the company and force it to sell some of its assets. Google would likely appeal that decision, arguing that it competed fairly against rivals such as Meta Platforms Inc.'s Facebook and Amazon.com Inc.

To explain how long appeals can take, Pichai pointed to Google's victory against a 1.5 billion euro ($1.7 billion) antitrust fine at the European Union's General Court last week – more than four years after it was imposed.

“Given our size and scale, I think scrutiny is inevitable,” Pichai said. “And I'm confident we'll be successful in the long run as we focus on innovating with technology.”

Watch the full interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday, October 9, at 9 p.m. New York time on Bloomberg Television in the program “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer to Peer Conversations.”

(Adds a Pichai quote in the last paragraph.)