In a sensational development, the US government has proposed to Google to sell its Chrome browser to balance its search monopoly on the Internet. Google holds market dominance with its browser and search engine, but that has affected market norms of competitiveness, and the US government seems compelled to democratize it now.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) made the proposal to Google to forgo its Chrome browser by selling it away. Earlier, a judge in the US District Court for the District of Columbia in August dictated that Google was monopolizing the market and found that it broke the law by signing multibillion-dollar deals to make it a default search engine on web browsers and smartphones. If you see Chrome as a default browser on your device, chances are high that Google paid the manufacturer for making it so.
“Google must divest Chrome, which has ‘fortified [Google’s] dominance’… so that rivals may pursue distribution partnerships that this ‘realit[y] of control’… today prevents,” the DOJ said in the filing Wednesday, citing the decision of Judge Amit Mehta.
“The playing field is not level because of Google’s conduct, and Google’s quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired,” the DOJ said. “The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages.”
This wouldn’t have come in a worse situation for the internet giant. Google is already facing stiff competition from ChatGPT with is new search engine development. And the government’s proposal could further dent its empire.
Google responds as the US government wants it to sell off Chrome browser
The California-based tech giant has likewise, responded to the proposal saying that the government’s “staggering proposal would hurt consumers and America’s global technological leadership.” Going further, the company said that the Justice Department “chose to push a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership,” Kent Walker, president, of global affairs and chief legal officer for Google and Alphabet, wrote in a blog post. 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.”
Among other things, Walker claimed, the breakup proposal would “require disclosure to unknown foreign and domestic companies of not just Google’s innovations and results, but even more troublingly, Americans’ personal search queries.” He also claimed it would “chill our investment in artificial intelligence, perhaps the most important innovation of our time, where Google plays a leading role.”
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It stretches up to Android
If you were not aware, Google owns Android which is an operating system of the majority of smartphones today. Various smartphone makers use Android Open Source Project to bake their own custom ROM. However, the violation the DoJ has noticed is that Google cut a deal with the phone makers to make Chrome the default browser on their smartphones. Google search engine comes default on Chrome browser.
The DoJ has said that “The most straightforward solution would be to [require Google to] divest Android, which would prevent Google from using Android to exclude rival search providers.” But the government said it recognized that “such divestiture may draw significant objections from Google or other market participants.”
But there’s an alternative offered to Google. The DoJ has sought ways that would “blunt Google’s ability to use its control of the Android ecosystem to favor its general search services and search text ad monopolies.”
As per Google AI Overview, Google search engine is the world’s most widely used search engine with a market share of 91.62%. The second-placed Bing stands at 3.31% as of February 2024.
The next court proceeding on the sale of Google Chrome browsers is due in April 2025.
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Do you use any other search engines like Bing, DuchDuckGo, etc. for internet searches? Do share your experience of how it compares with search on Google.
