Official court ruling or announcement from DOJ or Google

DOJ Seeks Forced Sale of Google’s Chrome and Possibly Android to Break Search Monopoly

Nov 21, 2024, 04:14 AM

U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust officials plan to ask federal Judge Amit Mehta to force Alphabet Inc.'s Google to sell its Chrome web browser, valued at $15-20 billion, in a historic crackdown aimed at breaking up the company's search monopoly. The DOJ is also seeking measures to prevent Google's Android operating system from favoring its own search engine and may push for divestiture of Android if competition is not restored. Additionally, the DOJ aims to curtail Google's ability to use search data to train new AI models and to end Google's multibillion-dollar payments to companies like Apple for default search engine status. This move follows a recent court ruling by Judge Mehta that found Google maintains an illegal monopoly over online search through exclusive agreements with device manufacturers and browsers. Search advertising accounted for $49.4 billion in revenue for Google during the third quarter. The proposed remedies include requiring Google to license its search data and results to competitors for 10 years. Google has opposed these proposals, arguing that they would harm consumers and developers.