Washington: The US Department of Justice, as part of an antitrust case against US tech giant Google, will ask the court on Wednesday to force Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc. to sell Internet browser Chrome, Bloomberg reported citing sources.
In August, the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling according to which Google intentionally acted as a monopolist in the Internet search engine market and thus violated the country’s antitrust law. As the judge found, the corporation ensured its monopoly in the online search services sector by agreeing with device and web browser manufacturers to automatically use the Google search engine in their products. According to the court, these agreements, for which the corporation paid companies “billions of dollars,” significantly complicated the ability of other Internet search engines to compete with Google.
Forcing Google to sell its browser will mark historic move against one of the world’s largest tech companies, the agency noted.
In addition to that measure, the antitrust agency’s proposals would include restrictions on the use of third-party content for answers generated by artificial intelligence (AI) at the beginning of a search query, as well as separating the Android operating system from the company’s other products, including search and the Google Play mobile app store.
The antitrust agency has rejected a tougher option that would force Google to sell Android, sources told the agency.
According to the sources, the US Department of Justice wants to reserve the option to decide later whether to make Google sell Chrome if other aspects of the antitrust measures create a more competitive market. Chrome currently has a 61% share of the US browser market, according to data from the analytics service StatCounter.
Earlier, the US government proposed changing Google’s structure in order to deprive it of the ability to use the Chrome web browser, the Play app store and the Android operating system as advantages for the Google search engine to the detriment of competitors. In response, Google called the US Justice Department’s proposal to change the company’s structure “radical” and “harmful.” The company expressed concern that the Justice Department’s requests go far beyond the specific legal issues in the case against it, will affect various industries, products and will have significant consequences for the US competitiveness as a whole.
