Yahoo wants to buy Chrome

Legacy search brand Yahoo has been working on its own web browser prototype, and says it would like to buy Google’s Chrome if the company is forced by a court to sell it.

The information came out during the fourth day of the Justice Department’s remedies trial to rectify Google’s search monopoly. The DOJ has — among other proposals — requested Judge Amit Mehta break up Google by requiring it sell its Chrome browser, which the agency says is a key distribution channel for its popular search engine that’s amassed too much power for anyone else to compete. Yahoo isn’t the only company interested in buying Chrome. While DuckDuckGo’s CEO said they wouldn’t be able to afford it, witnesses from Perplexity and OpenAI both expressed interest in the popular browser on the stand this week.

Yahoo seems to agree that owning a web browser is a very important portal for search, and is looking to run its own, either through developing or buying one. Yahoo Search General Manager Brian Provost testified that about 60% of search queries are done through a web browser; many people search directly from the address bar. That’s why, Provost testified, since last summer Yahoo has been “actively internally developing a prototype of a browser” to understand what it would need to do to put one out in the market. He added that Yahoo is in “ongoing” discussions with other companies about buying a browser, though he would not publicly state which ones it’s in talks with.

For Yahoo, prototyping its own browser will take six to nine months, Provost estimated. Acquiring Chrome would likely be a much faster way to ramp up to scale. Provost called Chrome “arguably the most important strategic player on the web,” and estimated Yahoo’s search market share could jump from 3 percent to double digits if it were able to buy the browser. He estimated the deal would cost tens of billions of dollars, and said Yahoo would be able to secure that funding with the backing of its owner, Apollo Global Management. Apollo actually owns a browser brand that was at the center of a different antitrust case, but Provost said he wouldn’t consider it an active browser. The brand’s name? NetScape.