A new anti-trust task force, which was commissioned in February, had been looking into the company's advertising practices and its influence in the online industry, the newspaper said, citing anonymous sources.

In May last year, as iTWire reported, US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin acknowledged that the Justice Department needed to take a close look at technology companies like Google that may be monopolies.

A Washington Post report in March 2017 said Google's close ties to the White House had prevented a proposed 2012 probe into the company's alleged unfair competition from going ahead.

Staff from the Federal Trade Commission had recommended that enforcement action begin, saying, according to The Wall Street Journal, that "the 160-page critique, which was supposed to remain private but was inadvertently disclosed in an open-records request, concluded that Google’s ‘conduct has resulted — and will result — in real harm to consumers'.”

The report said a WSJ investigation had pointed out that Google's executives had donated more money to the Obama campaign than any company.

Google has been hit with three fines by the European Union over activities deemed to breach EU anti-trust rules, the most recent being a €1.49 billion (A$2.38 billion) penalty for its AdSense advertising service.

In July last year, the EU fined Google €4.3 billion for allegedly breaching anti-trust rules over its Android mobile operating system.

In June 2017, Google was fined €2.42 billion for allegedly abusing its search engine dominance to give illegal advantage to its own comparison shopping service.

The company has said it will appeal against all three fines.