Lawyers at the US Department of Justice late Wednesday night asked the federal judge overseeing a historic antitrust case against Google to order the tech giant to divest its popular Chrome browser, according to NPR.
The Justice Department’s proposed final judgment in the case laid out the proposed anti-monopoly remedies that it asserted are “grounded in the market realities of general search services and search text advertising as we find them today.” The agency also proposed that Google be prevented from making third-party payments to phone-makers such as Apple that ensure its dominant default search position.
The DOJ also took aim at the tech giant’s artificial intelligence technology, asking the judge to require Google to allow websites to opt out of having data trained by its data-guzzling AI models.
The DOJ also proposed that Google be required either to divest from its Android phones business or to have the court supervise its Android division to police any possible instances of Google using Android to kneecap competitors.
“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 DOJ wrote. “The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages.”
Around 90% of searches are done with Google, and Chrome is by far the most popular web browser.
The tech company’s highly profitable advertising business is then powered by data it harvests from user activity on Chrome and Google search.
Pushing Google to sell Chrome, according to the Justice Department, will split the company’s browser from its search engine and create more competition in the online search market.
In a statement on Wednesday, Google called the Justice Department’s proposals “staggering,” saying that, if implemented, they would weaken security and privacy for users and stifle Google’s innovation.
“DOJ’s approach would result in unprecedented government overreach that would harm American consumers, developers, and small businesses — and jeopardize America’s global economic and technological leadership at precisely the moment it’s needed most,” Google said in a statement.
The Justice Department’s proposed judgment filed on Wednesday follows a ruling in August finding that Google had ensured the dominance of its crown jewel search engine by acting as an illegal monopoly.
According to the judge’s ruling, Google has been maintaining its dominant market position by unfairly boxing out search engine rivals to enrich itself. Google achieved this by hammering out expensive deals with browsers and phone-makers to ensure it had the default position on their phones as the go-to search browser, putting other search engines at a competitive disadvantage.