Google faced a fresh federal court test on Monday as US government lawyers asked a judge to order the breakup of the search engine giant’s ad technology business.The lawsuit is Google’s second such test this year after the California-based tech juggernaut saw a similar government demand to split up its empire rejected by a judge earlier this month.Monday’s case focuses specifically on Google’s ad tech “stack” — the tools that website publishers use to sell ads and that advertisers use to buy them.In a landmark decision earlier this year, Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema agreed with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) that Google maintained an illegal grip on this market.This week’s trial is set to determine what penalties and changes Google must implement to undo its monopoly.For the US government, Google should be ordered to spin off a piece of its ad tech operations, commit to changing its business practices and undergo close court supervision for the coming years.”The law requires the court to put its thumb on the scale” and end Google’s “profound and persistent harms” to potential rivals, said DOJ lawyer Julia Tarver Wood in her opening arguments.Specifically, the DOJ is asking that Google relinquish its dominating ad exchange operations, the software where publishers sell their ad inventory to advertisers and ad agencies through a real-time bidding auction system.In her opening statement, Google’s lawyer Karen Dunne called the DOJ’s proposals “radical and reckless,” a “swing for the fences” and said “caution was key” when Judge Brinkema made her decision on the fate of Google’s ad tech business.Dunne added that the government’s fix was technically unfeasible, would be highly disruptive to the industry and would “fail as a practical matter.”She not surprisingly turned to the recent decision in the similar case involving Google’s search business in which a different judge decided that splitting up the company’s business would be “messy and highly risky.”Instead, Google was required to share data with rivals as part of its remedies and undergo some court-ruled oversight.The US government had pushed for Chrome’s divestment, arguing the browser serves as a crucial gateway to the internet that brings in a third of all Google web searches.Google’s Dunne said the same caution should apply, with a forced divestiture far too radical a step, as she set forth the company’s commitments to change its business practices in order to satisfy the judge.The DOJ insisted these fixes fell short of what was needed and would see the tech giant swiftly regain its monopoly over the sector.In a similar case in Europe, the European Commission, the EU’s antitrust enforcer, earlier this month fined Google 2.95 billion euros ($3.47 billion) over its control of the ad tech market.Brussels ordered behavioral changes, drawing criticism that it was going easy on Google as it had previously indicated that a divestiture may be necessary.This US trial is expected to last about a week, with a decision by Judge Brinkema not expected for months.These cases are part of a broader bipartisan government campaign against the world’s largest technology companies. The US currently has five pending antitrust cases against Silicon Valley’s tech giants.

US President Donald Trump was expected Monday to deliver what the White House called “an announcement” about autism, having long voiced concern about the condition’s prevalence and potential causes.It was widely anticipated that Trump along with federal health officials will raise concerns surrounding acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, and possible complications of using it during pregnancy.Identifying the cause of autism — a complex condition connected to brain development that many experts believe occurs for predominantly genetic reasons — has been a pet cause of Trump’s controversial health chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Earlier this year the head of the US health department — well-known for his anti-vaccine views and penchant for conspiracy theories — vowed he would release findings regarding autism’s cause by September 2025.Trump teased the forthcoming announcement, scheduled for 4 pm local time, as “one of the most important news conferences I’ll ever have.””I think we found an answer to autism, how about that?” he said, speaking to a huge crowd at the memorial of Charlie Kirk, the slain right-wing activist.The administration’s recent initiative to uncover autism’s roots has been widely criticized, not least due to reports that the health department hired vaccine skeptic and de-licensed physician David Geier to lead the charge.The Trump government’s expected focus on Tylenol is also likely to meet broad critique.For decades acetaminophen has been considered the safest option for pain relief and fever reduction during pregnancy.Another common over-the-counter pain reliever, ibuprofen, is generally considered unsafe for pregnant people, especially after the 20th week.- ‘Nuanced and uncertain’ -A literature review published last month concluded there was reason to believe a possible link between Tylenol exposure and autism existed — but other studies have found an opposite result.Researchers behind the August report cautioned that more study is needed and that pregnant people should not stop taking medication without consulting their doctors.”Untreated pain or fever can also harm the baby,” said co-author Diddier Prada, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, at that time.David Mandell, a psychiatric epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told AFP that research suggests the possible risks posed by taking Tylenol while pregnant seem “to be lower than the risk of having an uncontrolled infection during pregnancy.”The professor of psychiatry also emphasized that digging into the interaction of genetic and environmental factors is an area of critical research, but that to take on those studies with rigor demands decades of study and funding.”They said it was going to happen by September. And so there’s an incredible like, pressure and urgency to come up with something,” he said of the administration’s push.That’s led to a “cherry-picked” justification of pre-formed conclusions rather than “an honest appraisal of the data,” he added.Ahead of the White House announcement the Coalition of Autism Scientists echoed those concerns.”It is highly irresponsible and potentially dangerous to claim links between potential exposures and autism when the science is far more nuanced and uncertain,” the group said in a statement.”Secretary Kennedy’s announcement will cause confusion and fear. He seems to be cherry-picking old data rather than looking at the body of research as a whole.”