Google faces an anxious wait on Wednesday, with the Biden administration expected to ask a judge to consider breaking up the Big Tech company.
Having climbed 1.6% the previous session as part of a broader tech rally, shares in parent company Alphabet gave up those gains early Tuesday, slipping 2.2% to $174.21. The benchmark S&P 500 slipped 0.8%.
Alphabet’s decline was in line with that of its Big Tech peers. Nvidia fell 2.1%, Amazon was also 1.9% down and Microsoft stock slipped 1.6%.
In a court filing due Wednesday, the Justice Department is expected to ask Judge Amit Mehta to force Google to sell its Chrome web browser or Android operating system if it doesn’t change how it links its mobile products with its search engine, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.
That doesn’t mean the breakup will actually happen. Legal scholars see Mehta as a by-the-book judge who’s likely to follow precedent—and in the closest parallel nearly a quarter of a century ago, Microsoft successfully appealed a ruling ordering it to split into two separate businesses.