Alphabet Inc's Chrome browser could go for as much as US$20 billion if a judge agrees to a Justice Department proposal to sell the business, in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the world’s biggest tech companies.
The department will ask the judge, who ruled in August that Google illegally monopolised the search market, to require measures related to artificial intelligence and its Android smartphone operating system, according to people familiar with the plans.
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Antitrust officials, along with states that have joined the case, also plan to recommend Wednesday that federal judge Amit Mehta impose data licensing requirements, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter.
If Mehta accepts the proposals, they have the potential to reshape the online search market and the burgeoning AI industry. The case was filed under the first Trump administration and continued under President Joe Biden. It marks the most aggressive effort to rein in a technology company since Washington unsuccessfully sought to break up Microsoft Corp two decades ago.
Owning the world’s most popular web browser is key for Google’s ads business. The company is able to see activity from signed-in users, and use that data to more effectively target promotions, which generate the bulk of its revenue. Google has also been using Chrome to direct users to its flagship AI product, Gemini, which has the potential to evolve from an answer-bot to an assistant that follows users around the web.
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Should a sale proceed, Chrome would be worth “at least US$15-$20 billion, given it has over 3 billion monthly active users,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh.
The price prospective buyers are willing to pay may depend on their ability to link Chrome to other services, said Bob O’Donnell of TECHnalysis Research. “It’s not directly monetisable,” he said. “It serves as a gateway to other things. It’s not clear how you measure that from a pure revenue-generating perspective.”
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Google’s Revenue Streams | Google doesn’t break out Chrome-related revenue, but its user data is key to ad sales, which represent the bulk of the company’s revenue
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said the Justice Department “continues to push a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case.” She added, “the government putting its thumb on the scale in these ways would harm consumers, developers and American technological leadership at precisely the moment it is most needed.”
The Justice Department declined to comment.
Chrome access
Antitrust enforcers want the judge to order Google to sell off Chrome because, as the most widely used browser worldwide, it represents a key access point through which many people use its search engine, the people said.
The government has the option to decide whether a Chrome sale is necessary at a later date if some of the other aspects of the remedy do not create a more competitive market, the people added. The Chrome browser controls about 61% of the market in the US, according to StatCounter, a web traffic analytics service.
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Government attorneys met with dozens of companies over the past three months as they prepared the recommendation. States are still considering adding some proposals and some details could change, the people said.
The antitrust officials pulled back from a more severe option that would have forced Google to sell off Android, the people said.
The benefit of Chrome, which Google doesn’t charge for directly, is partially in the convenience it provides users, by making their experience with Google products more seamless, said Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, on CNBC. “Breaking up these companies is not going to fundamentally address the annoyance you have with them.”
Google said in a blog post that if other companies owned Chrome, they wouldn’t have the incentive to invest as heavily in it or keep it free, and would likely have to change its business model.
Google appeal
Mehta’s August ruling that Google broke antitrust laws in both online search and search text ads markets followed a 10-week trial last year. The company has said it plans to appeal.
The judge has set a two-week hearing in April on what changes Google must make to remedy the illegal behaviour and plans to issue a final ruling by August 2025.
The agency and the states have settled on recommending that Google be required to license the results and data from its popular search engine and give websites more options to prevent their content from being used by Google’s artificial intelligence products, said the people.
The antitrust enforcers are set to propose that Google uncouple its Android smartphone operating system from its other products, including search and its Google Play mobile app store, which are now sold as a bundle, the people said. They are also prepared to seek a requirement that Google share more information with advertisers and give them more control over where their ads appear.
Lawyers from the Justice Department and state attorneys general included all of those options in an initial filing in October, as well as a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the centre of the case against Google.
A forced spinoff, if it happens, would also hinge on finding an interested buyer. Those who could afford and might want the property, like Amazon.com Inc, are also facing antitrust scrutiny that may prevent such a mega-deal.
“My view is this is extremely unlikely,” Singh said in an email. But, he added, he could see a buyer like OpenAI, the maker of artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. “That would give it both distribution and an ads business to complement its consumer chatbot subscriptions.”
A merger with a US-based AI player may more easily pass government scrutiny than another tech giant, said Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, digital advertising and media analyst at Emarketer. It “could conceivably be approved by the government as a way to prioritise AI innovation and US posturing around AI on the global stage.”
AI overviews
Google now displays artificial intelligence-based answers at the top of its search pages billed as “AI Overviews.” While websites can opt-out of having their information used by Google to create AI models, they can’t afford to opt out of the overviews because that would risk pushing them down in search results, making it harder to reach their customers.
Website publishers have complained that the feature dampens traffic and advertising dollars since users rarely click through to see the data being used to power those results.
Regarding data licensing, the antitrust enforcers plan to propose two options: That Google sell the underlying “click and query” data and also separately syndicate its search results, according to the people.
The company currently sells syndicated search results, but with restrictions, such as preventing their use on mobile. Forcing Google to syndicate its search results would allow rival search engines and AI startups to quickly improve their quality, while the data feed would allow others to build their own search index.
