In August 2024, the Internet Beamoth Alphabet lost the greatest no -confidence challenge, which once encountered when an American judge found that his subsidiary Google had illegally monopolized the search market.
US Federal courtyard Amit Mehta ruled that $ 26.3 billion (€ 22.4 billion) in payment made other companies to make a default option on inter -search engines on smartphones and web browsers, blocking any other contestant effectively in the market.
As a result of the ruling, the US Department of Justice proposes that Google should be forced to sell its chrome browser. In addition to selling chrome, antitrust regulators are allegedly demanding new measures to be taken by Artificial Intelligence as well as its Android smartphone operating system.
“Google’s illegal behavior has not only deprived the rivals of important destruction channels, but distributed partners, which are able to enter these markets by contestants with other white new and innovative ways,” Judicial and State Antiquette said in court fine, “Google’s illegal behavior has not only deprived important destruction channels.
Buyers are waiting in wings
Although Chrome is still not officially for sale, Openi, Yahoo and Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm, has expressed interest in the browser according to the Reuters.
But it was Artificial Intelligence Startup Perplexity, built on August 12, 2025, to buy the browser for $ 34.5 billion, about twice his own evaluation, without saying how it will find a deal.
The company in privately organized San Francisco was established in 2022 and made headlines earlier this year when it offered to merge with the US arm of Tikok.
The latest unwanted proposal of perplexity, this time to handle Chrome, comes as Judge Mehta, ready to rule the fate of Chrome. The combination forces with billions of users of Chrome are likely to have their AI browser of perplexity for advantage on rivals.
Chrome is important for Google’s advertising business
Losing Chrome would be a serious shock for Google. While around 90% of the global search query is conducted through the quarry Google, more than 60% of the users rely on the company’s own browser, Google Chrome to make those discoveries.
Chrome serves as the entrance to Google for the Internet. This allows the company to promote its own products and maintain customers, including services such as Gmail for email and Gemini for AI.
But more imported, Chrome is an important part of Google’s main occupation of selling internet advertisements. Unlike the discoveries made on other browsers, Chrome allows Google to collect much more data, search behavior and search as preferred websites. This money of information helps Google to target its advertisements more efficiently.
‘If Chrome Falls, Google Falter’
Advertisement is essential for Google and its original company, alphabet. In 2023, Alphabet produced more than $ 230 billion in advertising revenue, which was responsible for its $ 307 billion in total revenue for the year.
Digital Consultancy Atribs co-CEO and CFO Nills Cabback told DW that “If Chrome Falls, Google Falter is enough.” Hey said in his current setup, Chrome “is integral to Google’s business model, but may not survive automatically.”
Chrome’s sale-closure will also prescribe an important challenge for the alphabet. “Search for the event will be a big disruption, even for [digital] The market, “Siback said.
Ularich Muller now welcomed the proposal with the monopoly non-profit imbalance. Hey said that one of the chrome-off will reduce Google’s advertising income and will curb the dominance of the IT market.
It can push the company to compete more based on the quality of its services, he told DW. Müller therefore sees potential for alternative business models, discovering as membership-based search engines.
However, seaback mentioned that it is not clear how long the legal proceedings against Google will continue and when a potential breast braveup. “Till then, as browsers or search engines we know the theme may already be obsolete,” he said.
Vijay no confidence advocate for us
The 2024 decision against Google is more than a century of the US mistrust law. Back in 1911, those laws ensured standard oil breakup, John D. Rockfeller monopoly oil company.
Muller said that the regulatory investigation into monopoly in the 1960s and the early 1970s was very intense, but in the 1980s, the renovated teachings of the Chicago School of Economics were efficient by the neonalist teachings. This led to less structural intervention in the following years.
In the 1980s, a large antitrust case, however, was successfully launched against Telecom giant AT&T, which broke in 1982.
A few years later, Microsoft Monopo became the target of regulators, with an American court, a software giant should be divided into its monopoly practices. The company’s Windows operating system which tightly integrates with its internet explorer browser that it pushed out the competitive Netscape from the browser market.
Microsoft appealed to the ruling and avoid the breakup after making parts of your system accessible to the competitors.
This article was original in German.
Note the editor: This article has been updated to reflect the proposal of perplexity to purchase the original, chrome published on November 20, 2024.
