As reported by the United States Department of Justice, on Wednesday, Google should divest its Chrome browser as part of a remedy to break up the company's illegal monopoly in online search, according to a filing with the U.S District Court of the District of Columbia. Google would also not be allowed to enter again into the search market for five years under the DOJ's proposed remedy.

Ultimately, it will be up to District Court Judge Amit Mehta to decide what Google's final punishment will be; that decision could fundamentally change one of the world's largest businesses and alter the structure of the internet as we know it. That phase of the trial is expected to kick off sometime in 2025.

Judge Mehta declared in August that Google was an illegal monopoly due to its abuse of power over the search business. The judge also found fault with Google's dominance of various gateways to the internet and with the company's payments to third parties in order to continue its status as a default search engine.

Indeed, in its latest filing to the Court, DOJ argued that ownership of Android and Chrome by Google, those leading channels for the Search business, present "a significant challenge" to remedies for making the search market competitive.

The Justice Department offered alternative remedies to curb the search giant's monopoly, a spin-off of its Android mobile operating system. The filing cited that Google and other co-owners may not be on that spin-off and urged strict remedies such as not being allowed to use Android in an endeavor to disadvantage its competitors in search. The DOJ suggested that if the company cannot impose limitations on Android, it should divest the latter off.

They also contended the business should be prevented from engaging in exclusionary third-party contracts with browser or phone companies, such as Google's contract with Apple to be the default search engine on all of its products.
The DOJ further argued that Google must license its search data along with ad click data to rivals.

The DOJ also wrote out restrictions that bar Google from coming into the browser market again five years after the company spins off Chrome. In addition, it suggested that after the Chrome sale, Google should not acquire or own any rival ad text search, query-based AI product, or ads technology. Finally, this document spelled out provisions for publishers to opt out of Google using their data in training AI models.

If the court accepts those remedies, Google will suffer an overwhelming blow against it as a competitor to OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic in AI technology.

Google's response
Responding to this, Google said DOJ's latest filing was "a radical interventionist agenda that would harm people in the U.S. and the country's tech prowess in the world.".

“DOJ’s wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the Court’s decision. It would break a range of Google products — even beyond Search — that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives,” president of global affairs and Google’s chief legal officer Kent Walker said in a blog post.

Walker further argued that the proposal would compromise the security and privacy of users, debase quality of Chrome and Android, and thus influence services like Mozilla Firefox that are dependent on Goolge Search .

As if this were not enough, he added that the move would hinder people's ability to access Google Search, and as well damage the company's prospects in AI race.

"DOJ's approach would result in unprecedented government overreach that would harm American consumers, developers, and small businesses — and jeopardize America's global economic and technological leadership at precisely the moment it's needed most," he said.
The company will file its response to this filing next month.

The Wednesday filing confirms earlier reports that prosecutors were considering pushing Google to spin off Chrome, which controls about 61% of the browser market in the U.S., according to web traffic service StatCounter.