DOJ seeks breakup of Google, Chrome

What happened

The Justice Department Wednesday night asked a federal judge to order Google to sell off its popular Chrome browser and, potentially, its Android mobile operating system to level the playing field in internet search.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who is overseeing the government's sweeping antitrust case against the search giant, ruled in August that Google was a monopolist.

Who said what

Being forced to sell Chrome, with an estimated 67% of the world's browser market, and Android, with about 71% of the smartphone market, "would be among the worst possible outcomes for Google," The New York Times said. Google, the default search engine on Chrome and Android, handles about 90% of the world's web searches, according to Statcounter. Search engines "typically improve based on the data they gather from searches conducted by users," The Wall Street Journal said, creating a "cycle where success leads to higher quality, which leads to even more success."

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"The playing field is not level because of Google's conduct, and Google's quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired," the Justice Department said. "The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages." Along with splitting off Chrome, prosecutors asked Mehta to bar Google from favoring its services on Android and end its multibillion-dollar deals with Apple and other companies to make Google the default search engine on their browsers.

The payments to lock in Google search on other platforms was "one of the main practices that bothered Mehta," but it's "less clear" if he would embrace the DOJ's breakup proposal, The Associated Press said. An appeals court "overturned an order that would have broken up Microsoft" in 2001, and that may "make Mehta reluctant to go down a similar road." If he did, Google would be the "first big tech company broken up under federal antitrust law since AT&T in 1982," The Washington Post said.

What next?

Google has a month to respond with its own proposal for Mehta, who plans to hold hearings on Google's punishment starting in April and issue his decision in August. Google's likely appeal of that ruling could delay any sanctions for months or years, and President-elect Donald Trump's incoming antitrust team is another wild card.