WASHINGTON, Nov 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice will ask a judge to force Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab to sell off its Chrome internet browser, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the plans.
The DOJ will also ask the judge, who ruled in August that Google illegally monopolized the search market, to require measures related to artificial intelligence and its Android smartphone operating system, the report said.
Google controls how people view the internet and what ads they see in part through its Chrome browser, which typically uses Google search, gathers information important to Google’s ad business, and is estimated to have about two-thirds of the global browser market.
The DOJ declined to comment. Google, in a statement from Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president, Google Regulatory Affairs, said the DOJ is pushing a “radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case,” and would harm consumers.
The move would be one of the most aggressive attempts by the Biden administration to curb what it alleges are Big Tech monopolies.
Ultimately, however, the re-election of Donald Trump to the presidency could have the greatest impact over the case.
Two months before the election, Trump claimed he would prosecute Google for what he perceives as bias against him. But a month later, Trump questioned whether breaking up the company was a good idea.
The company plans to appeal once U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta makes a final ruling, which he is likely to do by August 2025. Mehta has scheduled a trial on the remedy proposals for April.
Prosecutors had floated a range of potential remedies in the case, from ending exclusive agreements where Google pays billions of dollars annually to Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and other companies to remain the default search engine on tablets and smart phones, all the way to divesting parts of its business, such as Chrome and Android operating system.
Because Chrome’s market share is so high, it is an important revenue driver for Google. At the same time, when users sign into Chrome with a Google account, Google can offer more targeted search ads.
Google maintains its search engine has won users with its quality, adding that it faces robust competition from Amazon (AMZN.O) and other sites and users can choose other search engines as their default.
The government has the option to decide whether a Chrome sale is necessary at a later date if some of the other aspects of the remedy create a more competitive market, the Bloomberg report said.
Is chrome even viable as a standalone? Or is the objective to force another megacorp to buy it? Because I don’t think it makes sense for anyone but Tencent, Even Microsoft can’t make money on Edge and it’s baked into windows and just a chrome fork.
There are tons of chrome-based browsers out there. The real question is what would stop Google from just pivoting to Nickel, the new chromium based browser they launch 15 minutes after they sell off chrome?
And those Chromium forks very much depend on Google to fund most of the heavy lifting and development work.
I definitely feel something needs to be done about google’s MANY de facto monopolies. But we do have to understand that divesting them of Chrome basically kills Chrome and a LOT of the browser landscape.
Hell, even Firefox is very heavily funded by Google, if memory serves.
An order to sell Chrome would be accompanied by an order (or consent decree) to not engage in web-engine and/or browser development.
It sounds like they have not formalized the specifics, but ‘sell off’ and ‘divest’ could mean something like breaking up Bell into a bunch of smaller companies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
Basically, it could look something like Chrome being mandatorily spun off as its own company, not under the Alphabet umbrella, no longer legally able to be internally funded by the rest of Alphabet.
Would this create a largely non viable standalone company?
Probably!
That’s kind of the point.
Giant Ass monopoly?
Blow it up, reset the market structure back toward a state that’s at least a bit closer to the mythical perfectly competetive free market, make some degree of actual competition exist to make the market actually responsive to consumer demands/preferences, lower the barrier entry for competitors, make innovation more likely.
Tough question.
I do doubt that the US would allow a foreign entity to buy it given the volume of domestic infrastructure/organizations that are reliant on Chrome. It would carry an inherent national security risk, as hypocritical as that is for the US to say.
The other problem for an independent Chrome company is that Chromium itself is an unprofitable FOSS project, and Chrome only derives value from integration with Google services (as Edge does with its Windows integration).
It’s not impossible, looking at Mozilla. But it would mean Chrome would have to become a very different kind of browser.
The Edge relationship also makes things interesting, as presumably without continued investment from Google, Microsoft would end up becoming the primary maintainers of the Chromium project.
I have no idea how the doj thinks this could work. Do they understand what chromium is and how chrome funds it? Also isn’t Google in trouble for paying Apple to be the default search engine? What exactly do they think chrome would sell? It’s own browser native ads??? User data? I don’t like any of the alternatives here
Sounds like a great idea. Force the sale!
Never gonna happen.
I didn’t even know Google owned Bloomberg News Reports!
