The provocative suggestion represents a dramatic escalation in News Corp's global campaign against the tech giants. Mr Murdoch and News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson have both been critical of Google and Facebook's practices, with the latter last week knocking their "smugness" and culture of "complaint compliance". Loading The submission has been made public just days after US senator Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for the Democrats in the 2020 presidential elections, announced her own plans for big tech companies to be broken up on competition grounds. Following a 12-month inquiry, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) last year declared that Google and Facebook's market power was adversely impacting traditional publishing companies. The ACCC announced a string of measures to resolve the situation, including establishing a new ombudsman to monitor consumer complaints, and another new body to oversee the algorithms that power Google's search engine and Facebook's news feed, as well as the tech giants' conduct in the advertising market.

In its submission, News Corp argues the ACCC should be given these powers, rather than new agencies. Google has an advertising partnership with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. News Corp publishes a number of competing titles such as The Australian. It is also the majority owner of pay TV company Foxtel. While News Corp Australia recognises that divestment is a very serious step ... divestment is necessary in the case of Google. News Corp submission News Corp's push to break up Google was contained in a "remedies paper" attached to its latest submission to the regulator. In that document, News Corp also called for "licence fees" to be paid by the platforms to media companies for displaying their content, and for the platforms to be prohibited from using data from a publisher's site to sell advertising around the internet. "Any solution must be bold. As we ... explained in our previous submissions, Google's prior conduct reveals a pattern of avoiding and undermining regulatory initiatives and ignoring private contractual arrangements," News Corp writes.

"While we recognise that the truly global nature of digital platforms like Google mean that some of the proposed remedies in this submission may require some co-ordination among governments internationally to be truly effective, we do not believe the ACCC should shy away from taking action or making such recommendations." Loading Google Australia was unable to immediately comment. In its second submission, released last week, it argued that it does not have market power and rejected the need for more regulator oversight. The ACCC also received submissions from other major Australian publishers and overseas observers including the ABC, Guardian Australia and United Nations privacy boss Joseph Cannataci. Unlike commercial publishers, the ABC remained neutral on the ACCC’s proposals to make news subscriptions tax deductible and increase tax offsets for media companies.