DOJ will push Google to sell Chrome to break search monopoly

Speaking of Google, the United States Department of Justice is pushing for Google to sell off Chrome.

Top Justice Department antitrust officials have decided to ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell off its Chrome browser in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the biggest tech companies in the world.

The department will ask the judge, who ruled in August that Google illegally monopolized the search market, to require measures related to artificial intelligence and its Android smartphone operating system, according to people familiar with the plans.
↫ Leah Nylen and Josh Sisco

Let’s take a look at the history and current state of independent browsers, shall we? Netscape is obviously dead, Firefox is hanging on by a thread (which is inconspicuously shaped like a giant sack of money from Google), Opera is dead (its shady Chrome skin doesn’t count), Brave is cryptotrash run by a homophobe, and Vivaldi, while an actually good and capable Chrome skin with a ton of fun features, still isn’t profitable, so who knows how long they’ll last. As an independent company, Chrome wouldn’t survive.

It seems the DoJ understands this, too, because they’re clearly using the words “sell off”, which would indicate selling Chrome to someone else instead of just spinning it off into a separate company. But who has both the cash and the interest in buying Chrome, without also being a terrible tech company with terrible business incentives that might make Chrome even more terrible than it already is?

Through Chrome, Google has sucked all the air out of whatever was left of the browser market back when they first announced the browser. An independent Chrome won’t survive, and Chrome in anyone else’s hands might have the potential to be even worse. A final option out of left field would be turning Chrome and Chromium into a truly independent foundation or something, without a profit motive, focused solely on developing the Chromium engine, but that, too, would be easily abused by financial interests.

I think the most likely outcome is one none of us want: absolutely nothing will happen. There’s a new administration coming to Washington, and if the recent proposed picks for government positions are anything to go by, America will be incredibly lucky if they get someone smarter than a disemboweled frog on a stick to run the DoJ. More likely than not, Google’s lawyers will walk all over whatever’s left of the DoJ after 20 January, or Pichai will simply kiss some more gaudy gold rings to make the case go away.