Google confronted an existential threat Monday as the U.S. government tries to break up the company as punishment for turning its revolutionary search engine into a ruthless monopoly.

The drama will unfold in a Washington courtroom over the next three weeks during hearings that will determine how the company should be penalized for operating an illegal monopoly in search. In its opening arguments, federal antitrust enforcers also urged the court to impose forward-looking remedies to prevent Google from using the same strategies to build an AI monopoly.

“This is a moment in time, we’re at an inflection point, will we abandon the search market and surrender them to control of the monopolists or will we let competition prevail and give choice to future generations,” said Justice attorney David Dahlquist.

The U.S. Department of Justice is asking a federal judge to order a radical shake-up that would ban Google from striking the multibillion dollar deals with Apple and other tech companies that shield its search engine from competition, share its repository of valuable user data with rivals and force a sale of its popular Chrome browser.

Google attorney John Schmidtlein said in his opening statement that the court should take a much lighter touch. He said the government’s heavy-handed proposed remedies wouldn’t boost competition but instead unfairly reward lesser rivals with inferior technology.

“Google won its place in the market fair and square,” Schmidtlein said.

The moment of reckoning comes four-and-half-years after President Donald Trump’s first administration filed the case against Google.