The outgoing Biden-Harris Department of Justice (DOJ) called upon a federal judge to force Google to sell its popular Chrome web browser in a legal filing submitted late Wednesday.
The DOJ argued in a 23-page filing that Google should be required to sell its industry-leading browser and restrict its Android smartphones from favoring its web browser after U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August that Google is a monopoly. Additionally, the government is seeking to block Google from striking major deals with Apple and other companies that would make Google’s search engine the default browser on devices like the iPhone.
“Google’s ownership and control of Chrome and Android — key methods for the distribution of search engines to consumers — poses a significant challenge to effectuate a remedy that aims to ‘unfetter [these] market[s] from anticompetitive conduct’ and ‘ensure that there remain no practices likely to result in monopolization in the future,’” the DOJ wrote in its filing. “To address these challenges, Google must divest Chrome, which has ‘fortified [Google’s] dominance,’ so that rivals may pursue distribution partnerships that this ‘realit[y] of control.’”
DOJ Google Filing by Nick Pope on Scribd
If the DOJ’s recommended forced sale comes to be, the transaction could cause huge business problems for Google, which is on pace to generate about $300 billion in revenues this year, according to CBS News.
The hearings that will determine the punishment Google faces in light of Mehta’s August ruling are currently scheduled to begin in Washington, D.C., in April 2025, with a decision coming as soon as Labor Day 2025, according to CBS News. However, it is unclear whether the incoming Trump administration will continue to pursue the case.
“DOJ’s approach would result in unprecedented government overreach that would harm American consumers, developers, and small businesses — and jeopardize America’s global economic and technological leadership at precisely the moment it’s needed most,” Google said in a statement. The firm further described the DOJ’s recommendation as “extreme” and “staggering.”
If DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter is replaced by the incoming administration as expected, it could be an indication that the future Trump administration will not pursue the case as vigorously as the Biden administration, according to CBS News. Kanter has overseen the government’s case against Google.
President-elect Trump has expressed his worries in the recent past that a forced divestiture could essentially destroy Google, though he has not clarified a specific plan for what he intends to do about the situation, according to CBS News. The government’s case against Google began in the last months of the first Trump administration.
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