US court won’t force Google to sell Chrome
Google has avoided having to sell off its Chrome browser after a decision by a US judge who said that the emergence of generative AI (GenAI) tools had changed the course of the case.
District Judge Amit Mehta had described Google as “a monopolist” last year in his judgment in a case taken against the search-engine giant by the US Department of Justice.
In his decision on what action should be taken to address Google’s dominance, the judge said that Google should be barred from entering or maintaining any exclusive contract linked to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app.
Data-sharing
He ruled out requiring Google to sell off Chrome and added that the court would not include a sell-off of the Android operating system in the final judgment.
Google must, however, make certain data related to its search engine available to ‘qualified competitors’, in a move the judge said would promote competition.
The judge noted that Google was still the dominant firm in the relevant product markets, and no new firm had entered the market since last year’s trial.
‘Crystal ball’
“But artificial intelligence technologies, particularly generative AI, may yet prove to be game changers,” he stated, adding that “tens of millions of people” now used GenAI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, to gather information that they previously sought through internet search.
Judge Mehta said that he must approach the task of crafting remedies with a “a healthy dose of humility”, as the court had no expertise in the business of search engines, the buying and selling of search text ads, or the engineering of GenAI technologies.
“And, unlike the typical case where the court’s job is to resolve a dispute based on historic facts, here the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future. Not exactly a judge’s forte,” he said.
The US Justice Department has taken a separate competition case against Google over its advertising technology, which has yet to come to trial.