US Regulators Seek To Break Up Google, Forcing Chrome Sale (apnews.com) 32
In a 23-page document (PDF) filed late Wednesday, U.S. regulators asked a federal judge to break up Google after a court found the tech giant of maintaining an abusive monopoly through its dominant search engine. As punishment, the DOJ calls for a sale of Google's Chrome browser and restrictions to prevent Android from favoring its own search engine. The Associated Press reports: 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 Washington, D.C. court hearings on Google's punishment are scheduled to begin in April and Mehta is aiming to issue his final decision before Labor Day. If [U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta] embraces the government's recommendations, Google would be forced to sell its 16-year-old Chrome browser within six months of the final ruling. But the company certainly would appeal any punishment, potentially prolonging a legal tussle that has dragged on for more than four years.
Besides seeking a Chrome spinoff and a corralling of the Android software, the Justice Department wants the judge to ban Google from forging multibillion-dollar deals to lock in its dominant search engine as the default option on Apple's iPhone and other devices. It would also ban Google from favoring its own services, such as YouTube or its recently-launched artificial intelligence platform, Gemini. Regulators also want Google to license the search index data it collects from people's queries to its rivals, giving them a better chance at competing with the tech giant. On the commercial side of its search engine, Google would be required to provide more transparency into how it sets the prices that advertisers pay to be listed near the top of some targeted search results. The measures, if they are ordered, threaten to upend a business expected to generate more than $300 billion in revenue this year. "The playing field is not level because of Google's conduct, and Google's quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired," the Justice Department asserted in its recommendations. "The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages."
Besides seeking a Chrome spinoff and a corralling of the Android software, the Justice Department wants the judge to ban Google from forging multibillion-dollar deals to lock in its dominant search engine as the default option on Apple's iPhone and other devices. It would also ban Google from favoring its own services, such as YouTube or its recently-launched artificial intelligence platform, Gemini. Regulators also want Google to license the search index data it collects from people's queries to its rivals, giving them a better chance at competing with the tech giant. On the commercial side of its search engine, Google would be required to provide more transparency into how it sets the prices that advertisers pay to be listed near the top of some targeted search results. The measures, if they are ordered, threaten to upend a business expected to generate more than $300 billion in revenue this year. "The playing field is not level because of Google's conduct, and Google's quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired," the Justice Department asserted in its recommendations. "The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages."
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M$ completely succeeded there. Firefox is not the reason why Internet Explorer faded. We can thank Google's support for W3C standards across it deployments and toolkits for bringing that about. And later IPhone/Android drove it to fruition.
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It amazes me that, surrounded by people who ostensibly care about actual functionality, people like you still try to reduce things to just your personal political understanding of things, not even realizing that you show your priorities in the process.
Re:Didn't they try this with Microsoft (Score:4, Informative)
Much different. With Microsoft it was that they were including it as the only default browser. With Google it's because they're making changes to Chrome that block other advertising technologies, while being very specific to allow for their own.
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No, it was a tying arrangement. I don't recall what the DOJ was seeking in that one, but it could have been to spin off the browser into a separate company. Though I'm not sure what remedy the DOJ would gain by separating chrome from google given it's open source, and the same can't be said of internet explorer. What would they sell? The trademark? The update servers and private keys? And what stops them from making another chromium fork?
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because they didn't like their browser?
Well, did anyone on God's green earth like it?
Just buy some advertising over on X.com (Score:4, Interesting)
Jokes aside there are already several companies looking to advertise back on Twitter even though none of their concerns about their advertisements being displayed next to extremist content have been addressed...
I am not going to hold my breath for any antitrust law enforcement in the next 4 years. We will be extremely lucky if the grocery store mergers going on fail because if they don't expect all of our grocery bills to go up 20 or 30%.
We were warned we just didn't listen.
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DoubleClick? (Score:2)
Why Chrome and not DoubleClick - I feel like the adtech and tracking services cause at least as much abuse of privacy as the browser...
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No -the question is, why Google and Microsoft, but not Apple?
Chrome needs to be on it's own and full adblock ne (Score:1)
Chrome needs to be on it's own and full adblock needs to be allowed
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Exactly who would buy Chrome? (Score:3)
Outside of any potential technical difficulties of selling Chrome (code base, licensing, patents, etc. Presumably Chrome as a 'brand' would also be packaged, and so on) just who do they expect would *buy* it? And who gets to set the price?
One also suspects that if foreign companies attempted to buy Chrome, there would be protests/lawsuits/whatever.
Or rather, if someone bought Chrome, how would the purchaser expect to make money with Chrome? Charge for it? Or do... exactly what Google is doing now? And if there is no way to make a profit from the purchase, why would anyone be interested in buying Chrome?
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Blink is open source, Chrome is most certainly not. That said, a lot of the values you get by using Chrome is Blink of course.
To whom? (Score:2)
What sort of for-profit company would want to develop a web browser? Excluding Google of course. :)
Microsoft going to buy it?
Re: To whom? (Score:1)
I'll buy it for a 10x multiple of annual expected profit.
This will all go away in a few months. (Score:2, Troll)
Once the orange dorito takes over.
Re:This will all go away in a few months. (Score:5, Informative)
Alphabet will wait... (Score:2)
Alphabet will wait until Trump takes office, sign a consent decree, and then the Justice Department will agree. Shades of Microsoft...
JoskK.
DoJ destroying what's left of the market (Score:2)
There are two consumer electronic ecosystems at the moment, Google's and Apple's. With Google's ecosystem losing ground due to poor integration and control (ChromeOS should have stayed a proper operating system with local applications, web only is too limited, Google should have full control over Android software&updates similar to ChromeOS) and because being an advertising first company will always relegate them to the low end.
Apple's ecosystem is especially dangerous because the vertical integration d