By Lauren Feiner , a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering

Google to court: we’ll change our Apple deal, but please let us keep Chrome

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2024-12-24 00:00:04

By Lauren Feiner , a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.

After its victory against Google in an antitrust trial earlier this year, the Department of Justice recently proposed a sweeping set of changes its search business. The DOJ put a lot on the table, demanding that Google sell its Chrome browser, syndicate its search results, and avoid exclusive deals with companies like Apple for default search placement. It even kept open the possibility of forcing an Android sale.

A court found Google liable for unlawfully monopolizing online search, and its remedies are supposed to reset the market, letting rivals fairly compete. Google (obviously) disagrees that it’s running a monopoly, but before it can appeal that underlying conclusion, it’s trying to limit the fallout if it loses.

Google’s justification is that search deals were at the heart of the case, so they’re what a court should target. Under the proposal, Google couldn’t enter deals with Android phone manufacturers that require adding mobile search in exchange for access to other Google apps. It couldn’t require phone makers to exclude rival search engines or third-party browsers. Browser companies like Mozilla would be given more flexibility in setting rival search engines as defaults.