Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has called on Australia’s competition watchdog to break-up Google, arguing the US company’s dominance of online search and advertising technologies is damaging consumers, advertisers and news publishers. 

The media group’s Australian division said in a submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s digital platforms  inquiry on Tuesday that it should recommend to Canberra that Alphabet, Google’s parent company, be forced to divest its search function from the rest of its business units. 

“Google leverages its market power in both general search services and ad tech services to the detriment of consumers, advertisers and news publishers. To remedy these harms, Google could either sell Google Search, or retain Google Search and divest the rest of its businesses to a third party,” said News Corp.