Google should sell or spin off its Chrome web browser to ensure competition returns to the online search market, a United States judge has decreed, in a move that could permanently change the way most people use the internet.
Judge Amit Mehta decided in a proposed final judgement that Google should “promptly and fully divest Chrome”, its web browser, confirming a proposal to redress what’s seen as a lack of competition in the online search world that was put forward by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
At the heart of the problem is Google’s near-total dominance in the online search and web browsing fields.
For more than a decade, Google’s Chrome web browser has been the world’s most popular way of surfing the internet.
It currently holds a two-thirds market share of the web browser space, a position it has held since bypassing Internet Explorer – now called Microsoft Edge – in 2012. That browser dominance is combined with a near-90 per cent share of the search engine market, which it has held for decades.
Together, that allows Google to hold what Mehta called in an August 2024 judgement a “monopoly” in general search services and search text advertising. The remedy to that is to sell off the web browser that helps Google gather data about users that can bolster its search advertising business, Mehta said.
The decision is a proposal of how Google could redress the issue identified by the DOJ and upheld by the court, with further negotiations to take place in March and April next year where details of how to restore competition to the imbalanced markets will be discussed by all parties. For now, not much will change.
How it would affect users
If it were to go ahead, and it remains a big if as Google could still make the case against it, users may well see more friction in how easily they can access services like Gmail, Google’s email service, through a web browser, or Google Drive.
Any potential change in ownership could impact how Google tracks web browsers and collects data that is the lifeblood of its business. This balance between data collection and privacy is something a new owner would have to navigate, with unknown impacts on how it would operate.
The DOJ has suggested a slate of alternative remedies in its proposals – including requiring the Android operating system, which runs on most non-Apple phones worldwide, to be unbundled from Google – which could lead to a myriad of outcomes for consumers.
A new owner could also change a host of product features, from the look and feel of the browser to the way results are displayed or the way businesses advertise on it. For advertisers, the ability to see in as much detail what users are interested in would be affected by the unbundling of Chrome from Google.
If it is ultimately sold to a smaller company, it also raises the question of whether new owners would have the resources to continue to invest in the product and whether the user experience might degrade or be overtaken by rivals.
The US government department stopped short of suggesting Google should divest its Android operating system, which would have huge effects on everyday users – but it’s likely that is being held back as a stick to use should Google not comply with the current decision.
Regardless, the decision itself is monumental, experts say.
“At first read, the DOJ’s proposal goes directly at the core of Google’s illegal conduct while taking steps to dismantle the structures that allowed such behaviour to thrive,” said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a digital content trade association and outspoken critic of big tech.
Kint praised the judgement for also helping head off the potential that Google could exploit what he deems “its data dominance in the emerging AI-driven marketplace”.
The result, he added, would be “a fairer environment for competition and innovation than we’ve seen over the last decade of life under the rule of Google.”
Google sees things differently. Kent Walker, president of global affairs and chief legal officer of both Google and Alphabet, the search titan’s parent company, said in a statement that the DOJ’s proposal was “staggering”.
Walker claimed: “[The] DOJ chose to push a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership. 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.
“As Google attempts to further expand its reach, using informational capacities developed in a variety of problematic ways, it makes sense for the US government to attempt to break up this growing leviathan,” said Mar Hicks, professor at the University of Virginia and an historian of technology.
Hicks added that the decision seemed sensible – and justified. “Establishing guardrails and breaking up tech giants in the US seems long overdue, especially given the harmful information ecosystem they’ve helped grow, which has shaped everything from our culture to our political leadership, to our economy, in ways that have been mixed at best,” Hicks said.
Google has said it will be filing its own counter-proposal to the judge’s decision by year-end, and will be making its case against the decision in 2025.
The big unanswered question from the judge’s blockbuster decision this week is who exactly would be able to buy the Chrome browser, and what would happen as a result.
Amazon and OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, have both been touted as potential suitors with enough money to buy the browser, which has been valued by some as worth $20bn, but neither seems likely.
Amazon is facing its own antitrust investigation, with the purchase of the leading web browser unlikely to help its own case that it has does not hold an unfair market dominance, while OpenAI is the leader in the generative AI space, and as such could see it argued that they too would wield too much power post-purchase.