Google tries to convince the antitrust judge not to force the sale of its Chrome browser

Google LLC has proposed limiting its search partnerships to address antitrust violations in its search business, as an alternative to the U.S. Justice Department’s suggestion that it sell its Chrome browser.

Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, detailed the company’s activities. suggested remedies in a blog post Friday. This follows an August ruling by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that it is run an illegal monopoly in the search engine and search advertising markets.

The DOJ and the group of states that filed suit against Google suggested last month that Judge Amit Mehta should force him to sell Chrome browser to resolve the problems. In addition, they requested that Google not be able to enter into default search agreements with companies like Apple In. They also want it to open its search engine results to competing search companies and further request that it to delete your Android operating system.

Mulholland said today that the DOJ’s proposal reflects an “interventionist agenda” that goes far beyond the actual purpose of the judge’s ruling.

The main problem with the DOJ’s proposal, she said, is that it would further harm U.S. consumers and undermine the country’s global technological leadership by forcing it to share users’ private search queries with foreign and domestic competitors, thereby limiting its ability to innovate and improve its search algorithms.

In his counterproposal, Mulholland suggests that Google should be allowed to continue working with third parties like Apple in revenue-sharing agreements, so that it can still be the default search engine on its devices. However, such agreements would not be exclusive.

“We don’t propose these changes lightly,” Mulholland said. “They would come at a cost to our partners by regulating how they must choose the best search engine for their customers. And they would impose heavy restrictions and oversight on contracts that have lowered device prices and supported innovation in competing browsers, which has been beneficial for consumers.

Google also suggests that Android device makers be given more flexibility to preload multiple search engine providers, and it would stop requiring them to preinstall apps like Google Search and Chrome.

Google’s search engine competitors, such as Microsoft Corp., which offers the Bing search engine, DuckDuckGo Inc., Qwant SE and Startpage BV would likely benefit enormously if they were forced to sell Chrome, which has a share important part of the web browser market. . However, it’s still unclear how a possible Chrome spinoff would work.

Judge Amit Mehta has scheduled a hearing in April, during which both sides will have the opportunity to present their proposals on how to resolve the matter, and a final decision is expected by August.

However, the case could be complicated by a possible appeal. Google’s president of global affairs, Kent Walker, said after the initial ruling that the company intended to appeal the judge’s ruling, which could delay any appeal for several years.

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