President Trump’s Justice Department urged U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to take action against Google and force it to divest its ownership of Chrome.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told the judge that the DOJ has “asked the court to impose remedies that will ensure Google can never again wield such dominance over internet search. The proposed remedies will ensure that the people enjoy vigorous competition and choice online. And we ask the Court to ensure Google cannot prevent its rivals from achieving scale”.
Similarly, Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater told Mehta that Google is a “gatekeeper for our commerce and our information.”
“It is so ubiquitous and so powerful that it interacts with millions of Americans, billions of times per day. Fortunately, DOJ’s Antitrust Division exists for cases just like this one,” Slater said. “Today begins the final chapter for this historic litigation. The Court has already decided liability and Judge Mehta has made two things clear: one, Google is a monopolist and two, Google broke the law. We are not here to relitigate the case, we are here to ask the Court to fix the harm from Google’s unlawful conduct.”
“The Google search case matters because nothing less than the future of the internet is at stake here,” Slater added. “Are we going to give Americans choices and allow innovation and competition to thrive online? Or will we maintain the status quo that favors Big Tech monopolies? If Google’s conduct is not remedied, it will control much of the internet for the next decade and not just in internet search, but in new technologies like artificial intelligence.”
If the judge were to order Google to sell Chrome, OpenAI may seek its purchase, ChatGPT lead Nick Turley said. “Yes, we would, as would many other parties,” Turley stated when asked if the company would consider purchasing the browser.
