Google released Chrome in 2008 and it became synonymous with the company and its search engine. If the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has its way, that may no longer be the case. DOJ antitrust officials plan to ask a federal judge to order Google to sell Chrome, Bloomberg reported, citing sources familiar with the plan.
In August, federal judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google “is a monopolist” in the search engine industry. Mehta later agreed that Google used “monopoly power by charging higher prices than the competition for general search text ads.” The company takes data from logged-in users to create targeted ads, but Mehta ruled that Google did not. the same monopoly power when it comes to the overall search advertising market.
In response to the ruling, antitrust officials also reportedly plan to propose that Google change its data licensing policy. The new proposal will see Google serve syndicated search results separately and sell its click and query data. These moves could help rival search engines and AI startups. Officials reportedly considered asking Mehta to force Google to sell Android, but backed away. DOJ made preliminary proposals to correct Google’s actions in October.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said that “government tipping the scales in these ways could hurt consumers, developers and America’s tech leadership when they need it most.”
Mehta’s August decision a 2020 claim It was filed by the DOJ and about a fifth of the states, including Florida, Indiana and Texas. It claimed that Google annually pays device manufacturers, US wireless carriers and browser developers “to secure default status for the search engine as a whole and, in many cases, to specifically prohibit Google’s competitors from dealing with Google’s competitors.” spends billions of dollars. According to Google’s chief technologist Prabhakar Raghavan the company spent $26.3 billion in 2021 In order to maintain its status as the default search engine – it probably went to Apple.
A two-week hearing on the changes Google will implement is scheduled for April 2025, and a final decision is expected in August next year.
