
NEWS AGENCIES
The U.S. Department of Justice requested a court to force Google to divest from the Chrome browser and end its monopoly.
American prosecutors said last Wednesday that a list of demands was submitted to a judge to end Google’s monopoly on search engine activities. The list includes the subsidiary of Alphabet relinquishing the Chrome browser and not allowing it to return to the internet browser market for five years.
The ministry also requested the court to force Google to divest from the Android operating system, and among the demands is to obligate Google to provide competitors with search results and information for ten years.
The Department of Justice seeks to end Google’s payments to Apple worth billions of dollars to ensure the data used by the default search engine remains on Apple devices.
The Chrome search engine, launched by Google in 2008, provides the company with data used for targeted advertisements.
Advertising revenues on the search network reached $49.4 billion for the parent company Alphabet in the third quarter of this year, representing three-quarters of total advertising sales. The Justice Department’s request represents the most aggressive attempt to split technology sales since the antitrust case against Microsoft, which reached a settlement in 2001.
Last August, a federal judge ruled that Google monopolizes the search market, and the court’s decision came after the U.S. government filed a case in 2021 accusing Google of market control.