Shares of mighty Alphabet are down about 7% today after the U.S. Department of Justice said it should sell its Chrome web browser among other remedies after the tech giant lost a landmark antitrust case last summer.
Government lawyers said in a filing that splitting Google’s dominant search engine from Chrome, which controls about two-thirds of the browser market, as well as from its Android operating system, is necessary to ensure a competitive Internet.
The filing comes after U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in San Francisco ruled in August that Google had violated antitrust laws “by maintaining its monopoly” on product markets including search. “After having carefully considered the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”
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The DOJ‘s filing requests what it believes are the necessary fixes.
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Looking ahead, while the Department will be different under the incoming administration of Donald Trump, antitrust suits aimed at the tech industry have often been bi-partisan.
Other remedies requested by the DOJ include Google being prevented from giving preferential access to its search engine on devices that use its Android mobile operating system. It asks that Google be forced to unload Android as well if it violates that. The DOJ also requests that Google be enjoined from paying to be the default search engine on any browser. It currently pays Apple billions to be the default search engine on the Safari browser and iOS devices.
“The remedy must enable and encourage the development of an unfettered search ecosystem that induces entry, competition and innovation as rivals vie to win the business of consumers and advertisers,” the department said.
Kent Walker, Google president of global affairs, described the Justice Department’s suggested remedy as a “wildly overbroad proposal” that would “harm Americans and America’s global technology leadership,” according to the WSJ. He said Google would file its own proposed remedy to the court in December.