This Wednesday, the US Department of Justice will ask Judge Amit Mehta, who is leading the antitrust lawsuit against Google, to order the company to sell its Chrome browser to break its monopoly in the search market. Bloomberg reported this with reference to informed sources.
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The regulator will also ask the judge who ruled in August to recognize Google as a monopolist to force the company to separate the Android operating system from other products, including search and the Google Play mobile application store, which are currently bundled. It would also require Google to share more information with advertisers and give them more control over where their ads appear, as well as end the exclusivity contracts it used to achieve its dominance in the search market.
These contracts helped prevent other search engines, such as Microsoft Bing or DuckDuckGo, from expanding their market presence. Google has more than 90% of search traffic, while competitors together barely reach 6%.
Dominance is a key factor in Google’s advertising business. The company can see the activity of registered users and use this data to more effectively target promotions, which generate the majority of its revenue, Bloomberg writes.
Google is also using Chrome to direct users to its AI chatbot Gemini, helping its popularity grow.
It also plans to force Google to license its search engine results and data and give websites more power to prevent Google’s AI products from using their content, sources told Bloomberg. When it comes to data licensing, there will be two options: either Google sells the underlying click-and-query data, or it separately syndicates its search results.
The company currently sells syndicated search results, but with restrictions such as not allowing them to be used on mobile devices. Eliminating this practice would allow rival search engines and AI startups to improve their quality and create their own search index.