The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it will try to force Google to sell its Chrome web browser as state governments seek to break one tech giant’s dominance of the search engine market.
The move follows a federal judge’s August ruling that Google violated antitrust laws by monopolizing the online search market and squeezing out competitors like DuckDuckGo and Microsoft Bing. The DOJ said that making the general search and contextual advertising market competitive requires “reactivating” what Google has blocked.
From the DOJ’s statement:
Google must promptly and fully divest Chrome to a buyer approved by the plaintiffs, at their sole discretion, on terms that the Court and the plaintiffs approve.
The DOJ also asked Google to divest its Android business to prevent the company from using its control to eliminate competing search engines. As an alternative, the department has asked a federal judge to stop Google from installing mandatory services on phones running the Android operating system. Violations of those terms, or other measures that fail to spur competition, could lead the Justice Department to take up the sale of Android as well.
The states also want to stop Google from entering into paid deals with third parties like Apple to make it the default search engine, and to stop Google from providing preferential services to other platforms it owns, like YouTube or Gemini.