The US Department of Justice wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser as part of its final remedy proposal in a landmark antitrust case.
The proposal, filed Friday afternoon, says that Google must “promptly and fully divest Chrome, along with any assets or services necessary to successfully complete the divestiture, to a buyer approved by the Plaintiffs in their sole discretion, subject to terms that the Court and Plaintiffs approve.” It also would require Google to stop paying partners for preferential treatment of its search engine.
The DOJ also demands that Google provide prior notification of any new joint venture, collaboration, or partnership with any company that competes with Google in search or in search text ads. However, the company no longer has to divest its artificial intelligence investments, which was part of an initial set of recommendations issued by the plaintiffs last November. The company would still be required to give prior notification of future AI investments.
“Through its sheer size and unrestricted power, Google has robbed consumers and businesses of a fundamental promise owed to the public—their right to choose among competing services,” the DOJ statement accompanying the filing claims. “Google’s illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that—no matter what occurs—Google always wins.”
The DOJ formally brought its case against Google back in 2020, the most significant tech antitrust case since the DOJ’s years-long battle against Microsoft in the 1990s. The lawsuit alleged that Google has used anticompetitive tactics to protect its search dominance and forge contracts that ensure it’s the default search engine on web browsers and smartphones. Because of its hold on search, the lawsuit claimed, Google can adjust the auction system through which it sells ads and increase prices for advertisers, and rake in more revenue from that.
Google has argued that its overwhelming success in search—it has a nearly 90 percent share in the US market—stems from the company offering the best search technology. It also says consumers are easily able to change their default search engine, and that Google does face competition from Microsoft and others.
The case went to trial in 2023, and in August of 2024 the US district judge for the District of Columbia, Amit Mehta, ruled that Google has maintained an illegal monopoly, both in general search and general search text ads.
Much of the ruling centered on the contracts Google has with device makers and browser partners, which use Google as their default search technology. According to Mehta’s ruling, around 70 percent of search queries in the US happen through portals in which Google is the default search engine. Google then shares revenues with those partners, paying out billions of dollars to them, which disincentivizes smaller search rivals who can’t compete with those contracts, Mehta said.
This past November, government attorneys submitted a detailed plan to Mehta that included a spate of recommendations for how to best loosen Google’s stronghold on the US search market. These recommendations included that Google promptly divest Chrome, its popular web browser; possibly divest Android; end its search partnership with Apple, in which Apple receives billions of dollars each year for its Safari browser to default to Google search; and give competitors access to Google’s data, for both search and ads, “that would otherwise provide Google an ongoing advantage from its exclusionary conduct.”
