Could Google be forced to sell Chrome? The latest from the Search antitrust trial.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s landmark antitrust case against Google has reached another milestone.

The DoJ has proposed five interventions aimed at levelling the playing field of Search currently monopolised by Google. Threatened with the forced divestment of Chrome and potentially Android too, along with an end to its dealings with Apple that have long placed Google Search as the default search engine on iPhones, the tech giant is predictably reluctant to play ball, rebuking the proposals with claims they would harm users’ data security.

Last August, US District Judge Amit Mehta found Google guilty of illegally monopolising the search advertising market, breaking Section 2 of the Sherman Act, by paying Apple $20 billion a year to place their product as the default search status on iPhones.

The DoJ has proposed the following set of remedies off the back of that ruling, which they argue would help dismantle the monopoly:

1. No more payments that “freeze the ecosystem in place,” which means terminating all search-based deals with distribution partners.
2. Google must divest itself of Chrome. This would throw the browser’s future into great uncertainty, a fact which Google will certainly use to justify refusal.
3. Google will share user-side data, search index coverage, and ad performance data. These metrics are necessary to compete at the same level.
4. Google will increase the transparency and control for advertisers, by providing advertisers with more information in search query reports, and allowing them to opt out of broad and automated keyword matching.
5. The DoJ will establish a technical committee to monitor Google’s compliance with these remedies. If competition hasn’t improved within five years, Google will be forced to divest itself of Android as well.

These proposals aren’t legally binding; their enactment is an ‘if’, not a ‘when’. And given the mutually profitable relationship between the Trump Administration and Silicon Valley, that’s a big if.

Google has wasted no time in pushing back, insisting that if enacted, these countermeasures would “force Google to share your most sensitive and private search queries with companies you may never have heard of, jeopardizing your privacy and security. Your private information would be exposed, without your permission, to companies that lack Google’s world-class security protections, where it could be exploited by bad actors.”

The experts are not convinced. Tasneem Chipty, an economist called in as the trial’s final witness, stated that the DoJ’s “remedies will have a better chance of restoring competition” than Google’s own, which she cautioned would “tend to preserve Google’s monopoly.”

It’s worth noting this trial is separate to Google’s other ongoing antitrust, litigating its monopoly in the ad tech realm. The outcome there could also have inordinate ramifications for the future of search advertising – and given that Google is first and foremost an advertising company, with 56% of all its revenue coming from Google Ads in 2024, we can expect even more reluctance and recalcitrance from them if antitrust interventions are proposed that would, for instance, force Google to stop artificially inflating bids for profit.

The next step in this Search trial is for Judge Mehta to consider the proposals from both sides, and issue a ruling on which measures will be legally compelled. Although undoubtedly possible, it is unlikely we see a forced divestiture of Chrome come to fruition. But whatever the decision is, we’ll keep you in the loop with a thorough breakdown of how it’ll impact advertisers and users alike.

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