The U.S. Department of Justice hopes Google sells its Chrome browser in a landmark antitrust case as part of its final remedy proposal.
The proposal, filed on Friday afternoon, said Google must “straightly and completely divest Chrome, as well as any assets or services necessary for the successful completion of the divest, at the discretion of the buyer approved by the plaintiff, but comply with the terms approved by the court and plaintiff.” It also requires Google to stop paying partners for preferential treatment.
The Justice Department also requires Google to offer any new joint venture, collaboration or partnership with any company that competes with Google for search or search text ads. However, the company no longer needs to divest its AI investment, which is part of a series of recommendations issued by the plaintiffs in November last year. The company still needs to inform future AI investments in advance.
“Through its scale and unlimited power, Google robs consumers and businesses of the basic promise that consumers and businesses owe the public, which is their right to choose in competitive services,” the Justice Department statement came with a filing claim. “Google’s illegal behavior creates an economic giant that wreaks havoc on the market to ensure Google always wins.”
The Justice Department formally brought its case against Google in 2020, the most important technological antitrust case since the Justice Department fought Microsoft for many years in the 1990s. The lawsuit says Google has used anti-competitive strategies to protect its search advantages and forge contracts to ensure it is the default search engine on web browsers and smartphones. Thanks to the search for litigation, Google can adjust its auction system that sells ads and raises advertisers’ prices and earn more revenue from it.
Google believes that it has nearly 90% search success rate in the U.S. market, and the company provides the best search technology. It also says that it’s easy for consumers to change their default search engines, and that Google does face competition from Microsoft and others.
“The Department of Justice’s comprehensive proposal continues to go beyond the court’s decision and will harm U.S. consumers, economic and national security,” Google spokesman Peter Schottenfels said in an emailed statement.
The case was tried in 2023, and in August 2024, a U.S. District magistrate of Amit Mehta, the U.S. District of Columbia, ruled that Google maintained an illegal monopoly in both general search and general search text ads.
Most of the rulings in the contracts Google has signed with device manufacturers and browser partners, which use Google as the default search technology. According to Mehta’s ruling, about 70% of search queries in the United States are made through the portal of Google as the default search engine. Google then shared revenue with these partners, paying them billions of dollars in revenue, which is reluctant to compete with smaller search competitors that cannot compete with these contracts.
