DOJ demands Google sell off Chrome in antitrust dispute

DOJ’s wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court’s decision. It would break a range of Google products — even beyond Search — that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives,

Walker wrote

Google must promptly and fully divest Chrome, to a buyer approved by the Plaintiffs in their sole discretion, subject to terms that the Court and Plaintiffs approve,

the Justice Department said in its proposed final judgment

We believe Google's default search placements via contractual agreements represent 50%+ of Google's US search queries,

he estimated on Thursday

Divestiture is a more effective remedy,

says Anne Witt, professor of law at EDHEC Business School's Augmented Law Institute

Look, Google has got a lot of power. They’ve been bad to me…”

When Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait recently asked whether Google should be broken up, the then-candidate responded

Amit Mehtadistrict Judge

The end result here is not dissimilar from the Microsoft court’s conclusion as to the browser market,

Mehta said

Consistent with the Court’s scheduling order governing remedy proceedings, Plaintiffs will file a Revised PFJ on March 7, 2025,

the lawyers said in the filing

William Kovacicformer Federal Trade Commission Chair

We have had such mixed messages from the Trump cohort,

says Kovacic

Courtney C. Radschamerican journalist

These remedies will have an impact,

says Courtney Radsch, the director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty at the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly thinktank

The spin-off of Chrome is possible but an uphill battle,

she says

Restoring competition to the markets for general search and search text advertising as they exist today will require reactivating the competitive process that Google has long stifled.

Government lawyers wrote

John Grubertech commentator

Chrome is not a stand-alone business,

noted Daring Fireball's Gruber

This may be one of the dumbest moves ever,

Max Weinbach, analyst at Creative Strategies, Inc., posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Google maintains Chromium for quite a few other ISAs. Google doesn't necessarily make money off of chromium, so forcing them to sell means you essentially kill it and Google forks their own version of Chrome to stop building for the ecosystem,

he added

Kent Walkerpresident

As just one example, the DOJ's proposal would literally require us to install not one but two separate choice screens before you could access Google Search on a [Google] Pixel phone you bought,

Kent Walker, Google's Chief Legal Officer, wrote earlier Thursday on Google's official blog, The Keyword

By then, browsers or search engines as we know them today might already be obsolete,

he said

Undoing Google's overlapping and widespread illegal conduct over more than a decade requires more than contract restrictions: it requires a range of remedies to create enduring competition,

Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo's senior vice president of public affairs, said in a statement

Amit Mehtadistrict Judge

The court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,

Mehta wrote in his 277-page ruling

Google’s unlawful behavior has deprived rivals not only of critical distribution channels but also distribution partners who could otherwise enable entry into these markets by competitors in new and innovative ways,

prosecutors said

It is probably going a little beyond,

Syracuse University law professor Shubha Ghosh said of the Chrome breakup