Opinion The US Department of Justice has accused a major tech company of an illegal web monopoly and tried to force them to split off their web browser. Sound familiar?
Oh, right, it was the United States vs Microsoft, aka Netscape vs Internet, in 1998. This time around, it's the United States vs Google. Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court ruled that Google violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by stifling advertising competition and arranging exclusive and restrictive contracts with other companies. To quote Mehta: "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly."
In detail, Mehta found that Google's contracts with Apple, Samsung, other smartphone companies, and Mozilla required them to use Google as the default search engine. In return, Google reportedly paid Apple $18 billion annually to secure its position as the iPhone's default search engine. Other companies received over $8 billion a year to ensure that Google was their search engine of choice.
The judge determined that Google's practice of paying billions of dollars annually to device manufacturers and web browsers to set Google as the default search engine effectively blocked competitors from gaining market share.
I can't argue with that. Of course, Google can.
Google dismissed the ruling as nonsense. Global Affairs President Kent Walker said: "This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine but concludes that we shouldn't be allowed to make it easily available."
The DOJ is now asking the judge to force Google to sell off the Chrome web browser.
If that reminds you of the US vs Microsoft case, it's for good reason. Back in 2000, the US District Court judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that Microsoft had "placed an oppressive thumb on the scale of competitive fortune." Therefore, Microsoft was a monopoly that should be broken up into two companies. In his plan, there would be a Windows company and a Microsoft software company that would own such programs as Outlook, Internet Explorer, and Office. It never happened. That part of his decision was overturned.
Amusingly enough, Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president of regulatory affairs, borrowed some of Jackson's language: "The government putting its thumb on the scale in these ways would harm consumers, developers, and American technological leadership."
If the DOJ convinces Mehta that he should order Google to split Chrome off, I can't see it happening.
Why? First, Google will appeal. Indeed, Google has already appealed. We're years away from a final decision. The case has already taken years. It started under the first Trump administration and may not be settled by the end of Trump's next administration.
While Trump is seen as pro-business, he's anti-Google. As he ranted before the election, Google has been "very bad to me. Very, very bad to me ... In other words, if I have 20 good stories and 20 bad stories, and everyone's entitled to that, you'll only see the 20 bad stories. I called the head of Google the other day and I said, 'I'm getting a lot of good stories lately, but you don't find them in Google.' I think it's a whole rigged deal. I think Google's rigged just like our government's rigged all over the place."
On the other hand, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is making nice with Trump now. On X, Pichai congratulated: "President @realDonaldTrump on his decisive victory. We are in a golden age of American innovation and are committed to working with his administration to help bring the benefits to everyone."
Since Trump's policies are really little more than how he feels at any given moment, I can easily see him ordering the DOJ to leave Google alone if the company is "nice" to him.
It's not just the US that dislikes Google's search dominance, though. The European Union's Court of Justice recently rejected the company's appeal against a €2.4 billion antitrust fine.
Still, let's say the DOJ does go after Google. It's estimated that the most popular web browser in the world would bring in $20 billion in cool cash. That sounds like a lot of money, doesn't it? It's not. In 2023, Google made $237.86 billion from its Chrome-driven advertising. This also puts the EU fine into perspective. You and I would be bankrupt. For Google, that's less than a week's revenue.
So, I don't see Google being forced to drop Chrome.
As I look at Chrome, though, I do wonder if Google needs to keep it anyway. There's already an open source version of Chrome, Chromium. Why not open source Chrome to stop the DOJ and other legal opponents in their tracks? I'm sure the Linux Foundation or the Apache Foundation would be happy to give it a home. ®