Justice Department hiring antitrust lawyers for ‘US vs Google’

The Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice is seeking "highly qualified attorneys" that it wants to serve as trial attorneys as it takes on Google.

The Justice Department last October filed a long-anticipated antitrust lawsuit against Google, alleging the big tech giant engaged in anti-competitive conduct to preserve monopolies in search and search advertising that form the cornerstones of its vast conglomerate.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT FILES LONG AWAITING SUIT AGAINST GOOGLE

In an online posting spotted on Sunday, the Justice Department is seeking trial attorneys to serve "in its Technology and Digital Platforms Section - United States V. Google Litigation Team based in Washington, DC."

"The attorneys selected can expect to be given significant responsibility and have immediate involvement with matters of national importance," the posting noted.

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The long-anticipated case, filed in a Washington, D.C., federal court, marked the most aggressive U.S. legal challenge to a company's dominance in the tech sector in more than two decades, with the potential to shake up Silicon Valley and beyond. Once a public darling, Google attracted considerable scrutiny over the past decade as it gained power but has avoided a true showdown with the government until now.

The department alleged that Google is maintaining its status as gatekeeper to the internet through an unlawful web of exclusionary and interlocking business agreements that shut out competitors. The government alleged that Google uses billions of dollars collected from advertisements on its platform to pay mobile-phone manufacturers, carriers and browsers, like Apple Inc.'s Safari, to maintain Google as their preset, default search engine.

Reporting from the Wall Street Journal's Brent Kendall and Rob Copeland contributed to this report