Google Chrome’s might be coming to an end as the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) is reportedly pushing to force the tech giant to sell its browser, aiming to curb Google’s dominance in online search and its growing influence in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector.
In court filings submitted last month to federal judge Amit Mehta, the DoJ suggested “structural remedies” to prevent Google from leveraging its products to maintain its monopoly in the tech market. According to Bloomberg, the government’s plans could extend beyond Chrome, potentially targeting measures related to artificial intelligence and Android, the operating system powering most smartphones worldwide.
Google was quick to push back, calling the proposals an “overreach” that would ultimately harm consumers. Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs, stated: “The radical agenda of the DoJ goes far beyond the legal issues in this case. 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 case against Google echoes the high-profile antitrust action against Microsoft in the 1990s, when the U.S. government sought to break the company’s monopoly over the software market. In 2000, a judge ruled in favor of splitting Microsoft into two entities, but the decision was overturned on appeal, and the case was ultimately dropped.
For Google, the stakes are equally high. The U.S. case, initiated under the Trump administration and carried forward by President Biden, is part of a broader effort to address the outsized power of major tech companies.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Google recently faced scrutiny from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over its partnership with Anthropic, an American AI company known for its Claude models. However, British regulators decided to close the investigation, ruling that Google’s $2 billion investment in Anthropic did not give it material control over the company’s policies and therefore did not trigger UK merger control thresholds.
Google now has until December 20 to submit its proposed remedies to the DoJ.
