DOJ Wants Google to Sell Chrome and De-Google Android
Juli Clover (Hacker News, 9To5Google):
The United States Department of Justice wants Google to sell off its Chrome browser as part of an ongoing antitrust lawsuit, reports Bloomberg. Earlier this year, Google was found to have a search monopoly, and antitrust regulators have since been deciding on the actions that should be taken to address Google’s anticompetitive practices.
The DoJ plans to ask the court to force Google to sell Chrome, which is the most popular web browser in the world by a wide margin. Chrome’s integration with Google Search and other Google products has been cited as one of the factors limiting search competition.
Regulators also want Google to uncouple the Android operating system from other products like Google Search and the Google Play Store, both of which are apps installed on Android devices by default. It’s not clear how unbundling Android from Google Play would work as Google Play is the Android app store.
This doesn’t make sense to me, and I don’t even really understand what they think it would help with. If there are illegal behaviors, why not address them directly?
This was stupid when they tried to do this to Microsoft 25 years ago. It’s equally stupid to do this to Google.
If Google were forced to sell Chrome, who’d make the default web browser for Android? Android can’t ship without a default browser. And the DOJ wants Google to “uncouple” Android from the Google Play store? Allowing Google to keep Android but not make its own web browser or app store is just nonsense.
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Chrome is not a standalone business. Android is not a standalone business. They’re both just appendages of Google that serve only as distribution channels for the advertising Google shows in search results, and the money it makes from advertising and game commissions in the Play Store. It’s like saying I have to sell my left foot. It’s very valuable to me, but of no value to anyone on its own.
This proposal is kind of nuts since the only business model for web browsers is revenue share from search results. That’s how Edge, Safari, Firefox and Chrome make money.
So the only way it makes sense for anyone to buy Chrome is to make Google the default search, otherwise it’s not worth the investment.
The idea that Google would be broken up as a result of their loss in the antitrust trial against their Search monopoly was never going to happen. Instead, as I wrote last month, it was more like Negotiating 101. Start by putting the biggest ask out there, see how the market (including, notably, Google) reacts and go from there. Having read that particular room, it seems like the DoJ is now closing in on their actual opening proposal.
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The government would argue that consumers will benefit as they'll no longer be as locked into Google Search – especially if this is coupled with an order to end any default search agreements with other browser makers. But unless those other browser makers choose another search engine as the default, it feels like Google Search will not be impacted very much. It is interesting to think if that would impact the uptake and growth of Gemini and a few other Google products, such as their payment services, but that's not what is on trial here.
It's not clear who could pay what for Chrome. Bloomberg throws out the notion of OpenAI being one potential home, but would the government really want that? That would risk anointing – well, really entrenching – a king in a new field. OpenAI's main benefactor, Microsoft could acquire it, especially now that their own Edge browser is all-in on Chromium. But they would probably just use it to bolster not just Bing by also their own AI products and services. And that would be extremely awkward for the government as well.
Previously:
- The State of Mozilla
- Firefox at 20
- Autoenshittification, YouTube, and Disenshittify or Die
- Google App Store Monopoly Remedy
- Does Google Chrome Still Devastate Mac Battery Life?
- Chrome’s Manifest V3 and uBlock Origin
- Google Search and Ads Monopoly
- Chromium Browsers Preferencing *.google.com Domains
- Most Compatible With Google Chrome
- Cue Testimony in US v. Google
- Chrome Faster Than Safari in Speedometer Benchmark
Update (2024-11-22): Michael Liedtke (PDF, Hacker News):
U.S. regulators want a federal judge to break up Google to prevent the company from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the past decade.
The proposed breakup floated in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice calls for sweeping punishments that would include a sale of Google’s industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions to prevent Android from favoring its own search engine.
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Although regulators stopped short of demanding Google sell Android too, they asserted the judge should make it clear the company could still be required to divest its smartphone operating system if its oversight committee continues to see evidence of misconduct.
The DOJ’s proposed remedies to address Google’s search monopoly are far reaching and will definitely reshape the internet:
- Google forced to sell Chrome
- Android can no longer promote Google Search
- Banned from default search deals on iPhones and other devices (Apple just lost $20B/year)
- Must license search index data to competitors
The second is that unlike the default search placement and deal they’re (rightfully, I think) worried about within browsers, using Chrome itself is actually a choice almost all users on desktops/laptops make. That’s because beyond ChromeOS devices, most such devices are Windows or Mac machines. And these devices generally do not have Chrome installed out of the box. You have to boot up Microsoft Edge or Apple Safari and yes, search for Chrome in order to install it. This is sort of a pain. And sure, Google uses prompts on Google Search at times to try to ease such actions, but this is something many users explicitly do.
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More broadly, the reality remains that what is going to break the dominance of Google Search is not going to be another search engine, it will be something tangential out of left field. As such, asking Google to sell/spin-off Chrome is seemingly irrelevant to the DoJ’s goal here. Perhaps if they forced a sale to a competitor that actually had the resources and will to support Chrome, but that would mean selling it to another tech giant, like Microsoft, or Apple, or Meta and there’s no way they want that – all of those companies are also under investigation for other forms of antitrust, market dominance, etc. Also, as the testimony from Apple and others has made clear in various trials, the main search competitor right now, Bing, simply isn’t good enough to replace Google even if they were offered more money to do so. Hell, even Microsoft admitted this! Perhaps after years of default placement and thus, usage, Bing would surpass Google, but the reality here remains that most people would probably just go back to using Google.
This has already been discussed extensively in prior threads, but the biggest question is, how does a spun-off Chrome get funded?
Chrome/Firefox/Safari all cost hundreds of millions of dollars a year to maintain. Currently, Safari and Firefox both make essentially all their revenue through default search agreements. Chrome, Edge, and now Brave are produced by companies that also own the search engines, so they’re essentially a loss-generating product, that exist because they cancel out distribution costs that Google and Microsoft would otherwise have to pay other browsers.
But the DOJ order is also asking to ban payments between search engines and browser makers[…]
Moreover, who would buy Google Chrome? It seems like the leading candidate would be Microsoft, who is still a monopolist on desktop, so that option might even be worse than the status quo.
It makes much more sense for Google to divest Android, which can make money via licensing and Google Play.
OpenAI building a search engine and buying Chrome after the DOJ forces Google to sell it would fracture Google’s search business overnight.
Josh Sisco and Leah Nylen (Hacker News):
Alphabet Inc.’s Google would be forced to unwind its partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic if a federal judge accepts the US Justice Department’s proposal to resolve a landmark antitrust case over online search.
I know one person who might jump at the chance to snap up the world’s leading portal to information for $20B, and who has access to the levers of government to force the sale to happen…
Update (2024-11-25): Nick Heer:
The full proposal (PDF) is a pretty easy read. One of the weirder ideas pitched by the Colorado side is to have Google “fund a nationwide advertising and education program” which may, among other things, “include reasonable, short-term incentive payments to users” who pick a non-Google search engine from the choice screen.
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The D.O.J.’s theory of growth reinforcing quality and market dominance is sound, from what I understand, and Google does advantage Chrome in some key ways. Most directly related to this case is whether Chrome activity is connected to Google Search. Despite company executives explicitly denying using Chrome browsing data for ranking, a leak earlier this year confirmed Google does, indeed, consider Chrome views in its rankings.
There is also a setting labelled “Make searches and browsing better”, which automatically “sends URLs of the pages you visit” to Google for users of Chromium-based browsers. Google says this allows the company to “predict what sites you might visit next and to show you additional info about the page you’re visiting” which allows users to “browse faster because content is proactively loaded”.
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I do not think Chrome can exist as a standalone company. I also do not think it makes sense for another company to own it, since any of those big enough to do so either have their own browsers — Apple’s Safari, Microsoft’s Edge — or would have the potential to create new anticompetitive problems, like if it were acquired by Meta.
Update (2024-11-26): Casey Newton:
In a blog post today, Google argued that the opposite is true. Kent Walker, the company’s chief legal officer, called it “a radical interventionist agenda” and a “staggering proposal [that] would hurt consumers and America’s global technological leadership.”
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As I wrote Tuesday, I’m not fond of forcing Google to divest Chrome: it was built in house, and earned its spot as the most popular browser in the United States fairly: by being meaningfully better than its competition. No matter who owns and operates it, most US users will probably set Chrome’s search engine to Google. It’s hard to see that shaking up the search market too much.
Requiring Google to license search queries and results, on the other hand, could be transformative. Suddenly, Google’s rivals would have a more even footing on which to attempt to build better search products.
Update (2024-11-27): Michael Kan (via Nick Heer):
“We strongly urge the Court to consider remedies that improve search competition without harming independent browsers and browser engines,” a Mozilla spokesperson tells PCMag.
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“The proposed remedies are designed to end Google’s unlawful practices and open up the market for rivals and new entrants to emerge,” the DOJ told the court. The problem is that Mozilla earns most of its revenue from royalty deals—nearly 86% in 2022—making Google the default Firefox browser search engine.
Previously:
