Google Chrome's divorce may be the start of a bigger split-up

Antitrust action will likely go beyond forcing its search engine out

- PARMY OLSON

News broke last week that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) wants to force Alphabet's Google to sell Chrome, its dominant web browser. That has led to much head-scratching in the tech industry. Sure, Chrome is a major moat for Google's business, but is it really the source of its power? And if a company buys Chrome for an estimated $20 billion, wouldn't that mean someone else controls two-thirds of the browser market?

Read the tea leaves carefully and there's more happening. The DoJ, for one, seems to be moving quickly to get ahead of any efforts by the incoming Trump administration to shut down its most ambitious work in decades. Google is too large for the DoJ to break it up all at once, and the agency has two separate cases against the company, each pushing for spinoffs of different parts.

The DoJ's efforts on Chrome relate to a case it filed in 2020, focusing on Google's search monopoly. But the DoJ also filed another case in 2023 that's arguably more important, targeting its ad tech business. Google dominates digital advertising by controlling both the marketplace for online ads and the essential tools that advertisers and websites need to participate. The business generates roughly $200 billion in annual revenue.