Will the Google antitrust ruling shake up the internet?

Tech industry observers warned that Google's loss in a high-profile federal antitrust case could change how you search the internet. That prediction is closer to becoming true: The government is now asking a judge to force the company to sell off its Chrome browser business.

Government lawyers argue Google should be required to separate "its search engine from products it has built to access the internet," said The Wall Street Journal. Chrome controls about two-thirds of the browser market — and all those browsers are set to use Google's search engine by default, helping give it 90% of the search market. Spinning off the browser business "could upend an industry" in which search competitors like Microsoft's Bing and DuckDuckGo have relatively miniscule shares, said the Journal. Google execs don't like the government proposal, calling it "wildly overbroad."

But if Google is forced to sell Chrome, "finding a buyer for what would be a multibillion-dollar company could be challenging," said The Washington Post. "If Amazon owns it, it just reinforces their monopoly in commerce," said Ari Paparo, an online advertising executive. A possible option? Spinning Chrome off into a nonprofit like Mozilla, which oversees the Firefox browser. One thing that's clear: Google's August loss in the antitrust case could have ramifications across the tech industry.

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What did the commentators say?

"The ruling threatens to alter one of Apple's most lucrative business arrangements," said The New York Times' DealBook newsletter. The iPhone maker received $20 billion from Google in 2022 alone to give its search engine preference on Apple devices. That's a revenue stream that could now go away. "Would Apple look to Microsoft's Bing or someone else to power search on the iPhone?" Or could it create its own search engine? Whatever happens, the ruling "threatens to disrupt one of the most valuable businesses in modern history, and Big Tech more broadly."

"The court's decision was the correct one, but it came way too late to make a real difference," Dave Lee said at Bloomberg. The case took six years to come to fruition, and it's likely the ultimate result might dent Google's market share "by a percentage point here and there." But it's hard to see a real competitor on the horizon: Microsoft added artificial intelligence functionality to its Bing search engine and it "didn't make the faintest bit of difference." Even with an adverse ruling, Google might still be too big to fail. "Whatever window may have been open for a Google competitor to arise was sealed shut firmly long ago."

What next?

"It's hard to imagine something different" from the current Google-dominated internet, Shira Ovide said at The Washington Post. Now there's an opportunity. One possibility: Google could be forced to share its "secret sauce" — built from the data of all those users — with other search companies to let those rivals "make more appealing search engines." But it's also possible that nothing much will change, at least from a user standpoint. "That's what happened after Google was found to have broken the European Union's anti-monopoly laws."

Indeed, some observers believe the government might lose its attempt to force Google to sell off its browser business. "It would strike me as an over-ask," Kevin Walkush at Jensen Investment Management said to Reuters. The Justice Department tried to break up Microsoft in the early 2000s and ultimately failed. And there's a real question whether selling Chrome would address the key problem raised by the government, which is Google's domination of the search market. "Divesting Chrome does absolutely nothing to address this concern," said Gus Hurwitz of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School