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The Department of Justice is reaffirming its demands for action to break up Google’s search monopoly, calling for the sale of Chrome and potentially Android as well.
In a court filing published on March 7, the DOJ doubled down on its assertion that Google’s dominance in search is the result of monopolistic practices that have been leveraged to support other services, such as Chrome and Android, in a way that makes fair competition nearly impossible.
The Revised Proposed Final Judgement (RPFJ) lays out the stakes, stating, “The American people’s reliance on Google’s search engine is well-known. Less understood, however, is how Google—through its unlawful and unchecked, monopolistic conduct over the past decade—secured the American people’s reliance. Google’s anticompetitive conduct has denied users of a basic American value—the ability to choose in the marketplace.”
The remedy for this, according to the plaintiffs, is to “require Google to divest Chrome—a critical distribution point—to shield against self-preferencing.”
Additionally, the court filing calls for a provision for Google to divest Android and includes measures to prohibit Google from making “exclusionary third-party agreements” in which Google pays partners to be the default search engine on their devices or services. The most notable of these deals is Google’s partnership with Apple, which the RPFJ references numerous times, calling such deals “unlawful distribution agreements.”
All of that effectively means Google may be forced to sell off Chrome, potentially sell Android, and end agreements with third-parties in which Google pays to be the default search engine. The court filing even suggests the judge should “require Google to share data to offset the scale disadvantage that its unlawful conduct has created.”
In fact, the only thing the DOJ seems to have taken a step back on is AI. The new proposal backed down on limitations to Google’s AI investments, a slight shift in Google’s favor since the initial proposed remedies.
District Judge Amit Mehta had already ruled back in August 2024 that Google had a monopoly in search, but how Google is ordered to resolve that remains up for debate—or, in this case, litigation.
Keep in mind—this is an ongoing case and the March 7 court filing is just a proposal from the DOJ, not a final ruling. Breaking up monopolies is certainly a good thing for consumers, but as PC Gamer’s James Bentley has pointed out, “Selling off [Chrome] could indeed leave consumers open to bad practices, both technically and ethically, from the potential buyer.”
So, it will be important for the court to take steps to ensure that if Google is forced to sell Chrome, it ends up in the hands of a responsible company or organization. After all, this is the most popular web browser in the world we’re talking about.
Google has repeatedly pleaded for the DOJ to back off, calling the DOJ’s proposals a “radical interventionist agenda”, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen now, especially with hearings set to kick off in April.
The judge will have the final say in whether Google has to sell Chrome and potentially even Android, but this is shaping up to be a landmark antitrust case the likes of which we haven’t seen since the litigation against Microsoft in 1998.
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Kurt Indovina
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