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.
view the rest of the comments
News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
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.
Killing Chrome will be a short-term problem but necessary nonetheless.
"Short term" implies there is a real path forward.
Of the Chromium forks, the only ones with enough revenue to consider pumping back into major development costs (because the engineers you want working on the browser ~66% of the world uses aren't cheap) are the ones you REALLY don't want to have controlling said browser.
People have a tendency to very much not understand that even open source projects have development costs. That is WHY there are major foundations around Linux and the like. Because a hobby project is something people can work on in their spare time. A browser (or an OS) is something that requires full time engineers. Would have to check, but I wouldn't be shocked in the majority of community MRs at this point are also funded by companies (getting a fix or feature support in).
And the idea that, "short term" all the Chromium forks and all the community would unite to manage it themselves when they have been dependent on Google/Alphabet doing the heavy lifting for 16 years.
At best? We are looking back at the dark times where anyone doing ANYTHING "web" related needed to have like twelve different browsers installed and fix specific bugs for internet explorer and netscape and so forth. More likely? We are seeing massive stagnation and you can bet that every single blackhat (and most of the greyhats) are gonna be out for blood.
By all means, fuck Google. But people need to understand what they are asking for and what will likely happen.
This is the right take. This move would be so deleterious to the way the internet works on a foundational level at this point, it’s almost ridiculous. It would impact the world less if the courts forced google to sell off Search.
The idea of who might have the assets to acquire this company and be an organization that would be preferable to Google maintaining control of Chrome doesn’t conjure many candidates. The best case scenario would be Microsoft, and they aren’t buying a browser company.
Completely agree with you, fuck Google, fuck their monopolistic business practices, fuck their increasingly surveillance driven operating model, and fuck their gutless leadership for allowing their company to be reduced to an advertising enshittification factory after becoming so deeply ingrained in the way the internet is used that it became a verb.