The Justice Department apparently wants Google's empire to be broken up, but it has to convince a judge that should happen first.
The process starts Wednesday when US prosecutors are expected to submit a document in federal court outlining specific remedies after successfully arguing in a landmark trial that Google ran its search engine empire as an illegal monopoly.
The DOJ is expected to ask for Google's Alphabet parent (GOOG, GOOGL) to sell off its Chrome browser, according to a report in Bloomberg. The Wall Street Journal reported that divestments could include the Android mobile operating system if Google doesn't meet certain conditions.
Prosecutors may also call for new data licensing requirements or an end to agreements that secure Google's search engine as a default on mobile devices and internet browsers.
DOJ outlined a framework of options last month, but the filing Wednesday is expected to be a lot more specific about what it wants to happen.
It will then be up to District of Columbia District Court Judge Amit Mehta, who sided with the DOJ's monopoly argument, to decide what should happen next in a separate "remedies" phase of the trial that will likely start in 2025.
A DOJ breakup request would be the latest of many aggressive signals sent to the tech world during a wide-ranging effort by the Biden administration to rein in what it views as anticompetitive behavior across a number of industries.
The administration has already alleged anticompetitive conduct against tech giants Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) and claimed that Microsoft's acquisition of gaming giant Activision Blizzard would create a gaming market monopoly.
"The DOJ continues to push a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case," Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president of regulatory affairs told Yahoo Finance in an email.
"The government putting its thumb on the scale in these ways would harm consumers, developers and American technological leadership at precisely the moment it is most needed."
It is not yet known whether a new Trump administration would let all of those Big Tech antitrust cases continue.
Some legal experts don't expect the crackdown to let up. After all, it was Trump's DOJ that initiated the antitrust suit against Google after it concluded the company used illegal tactics to monopolize search.
But Trump in October also suggested that Google's punishment could be accomplished without forcing it to sell off parts of its empire.
"What you can do without breaking it up is make sure it's more fair," Trump said in an Oct. 15 interview.