The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has formally called for Google to sell Chrome.
Confirming reports earlier this week, the DoJ lists in a court filing a series of remedies in response to an anti-competition ruling in August, in which Google was found to have violated antitrust laws through its online search business.
In particular, regulators focused on the use of payments worth billions of dollars to rival browser makers to ensure that Google was included as a search engine.
The suggested remedies include the widely-anticipated divestment of Chrome, which is by far the world’s most popular browser. The DoJ also seeks to prohibit Google from re-entering the browser market for at least five years.
The ruling isn’t final. Google is expected to file a counter in December, with a ruling issued by next August. If Google appeals that ruling too, the case could go on for years.
The filing notes that it’s difficult to remove Google’s dominance from search — and prevent a monopoly from occurring in the future — without considering its ownership of Chrome and Android.
The filing says: “To address these challenges, Google must divest Chrome, which has fortified [Google’s] dominance, so that rivals may pursue distribution partnerships that this reality of control today prevents.”
Is Android next?
The filing also indicated that Google could also be forced to sell Android, unless the company changes its behavior.
Describing Android as “a critical platform on which search competitors rely and for which Google has myriad obvious and not-so-obvious ways to favor its own search products”, it pointed out that a divestiture would be the most straightforward option.
However, it said, it would first give the company a chance to implement behavioral remedies that would blunt its ability to use its control of the Android ecosystem to favor its search services and search text ad monopolies. If this has no effect, Android could be sold too.
In a statement, Google describes the filing as ‘staggering’.
“DoJ had a chance to propose remedies related to the issue in this case: search distribution agreements with Apple, Mozilla, smartphone OEMs, and wireless carriers,” said Kent Walker, president, global affairs and chief legal officer.
“Instead, DOJ chose to push a radical interventionist agenda that would harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership,” he added in a statement. “DOJ’s wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court’s decision. It would break a range of Google products — even beyond Search — that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives.”
The move has attracted condemnation from parts of the industry.
“This entire case has been premised on a disturbing and unsupported premise: a company that has achieved success through superior innovation can nonetheless be held liable under the antitrust laws for reasons beyond consumer welfare,” said Chris Mohr, president of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA).
“As a result, the extreme remedies recommended by the Department of Justice benefit no one other than Google’s business competitors while harming both the consumers who really like Google services and the developers who benefit from the current ecosystem.”
Rob Retzlaff, executive director of the Connected Commerce Council (3C), argued that the suggested mitigations would have wider impacts. “The DoJ’s proposed remedies would severely harm America’s small business owners, who leverage Google’s secure, cost-effective integrated tools to run and grow their business,” he said.
