For almost a year, the future of the world’s most popular web browser has been a question mark. After the United States declared Google an illegal monopoly in online search, federal prosecutors put forth a forced divestment of Chrome as one possible legal remedy. The case is now resolved, pending appeal, and Google won’t have to sell Chrome. (That rush of wind you just felt is a giant sigh of relief from Google’s C-suite.)
Instead, Google will have to provide search index data and amalgamated user metrics to at least some of its competitors. Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the government prosecutors couldn’t prove that Google’s dominance in the browser space—just under 70 percent of market share, at the time of writing—was essential to its illegal monopoly in search, as Ars Technica reports. Ditto for Google’s operation of the Android mobile operating system, which it will also get to keep.
And so the biggest shakeup in online power in decades won’t happen, at least not now. Things were starting to look interesting, too. OpenAI, the current juggernaut of the “AI” space thanks to ChatGPT, stated an interest in buying Google’s browser. Perplexity, makers of a competing “AI” search engine, made a public declaration of intent to buy Chrome if it became available, offering about $35 billion (which, incidentally, is about double the evaluation of the company, which had only 52 employees in 2024). So did Yahoo, which, yes, still exists as more than a sports betting outlet. Hey, I’m as shocked as you are.
Plenty of Chrome fans would be happy enough to see Google retain control of the iconic browser. But arguably, the bigger change would have been under the hood. If Google can’t flex its dominance with Chrome, what happens to Chromium, the Google-funded open-source project that underpins both the browser and ChromeOS operating system powering Chromebook laptops? What happens to all the browsers that also rely on Chromium, and by extension Google? That includes Microsoft’s revamped Edge, Opera, Brave, and my own browser bestie Vivaldi. The only major browsers left that don’t heavily rely on Chromium are Apple’s Safari and Firefox, the lone semi-independent holdout.
Google could still appeal this ruling, and previously said it would after it was declared a monopoly. But I’m wondering if it’ll carry through with that plan. Sharing search data with competitors is a loss for the company—especially as “AI” alternatives nip at the heels of its decades-long search engine dominance—but that dominance isn’t going anywhere for the time being. Mehta’s ruling is essentially a slap on the wrist at the level of power and money at which Google operates, a declaration that if you have a tech monopoly, you get to keep it. Ma Bell is rolling in its grave.
Google just dodged the biggest bullet in its corporate history. I wonder how eager it is to try for another shot.