A U.S. federal judge is expected to decide in the coming days on a problem that has plagued both American and European competition cops for more than a decade: what to do about Google’s search monopoly.
The D.C. court is expected to rule by Monday on whether to order Google to spin off its Chrome browser, one of the most valuable patches of online real estate, following its 2024 finding that the firm holds an illegal monopoly in search and a request by the U.S. Department of Justice to do so.
Viewed from Brussels, which is chewing over its own late-stage antitrust case against Google’s market dominance, a court-ordered sale of Chrome would be a convenient result — especially as the European Commission faces heat from the Trump administration to lay off on Big Tech enforcement.
“An American spin-off would ignite EU glee,” said Aurelien Portuese, a professor of competition law at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., adding that it would probably trigger a copycat response on the European side to align its rules with Chrome’s new commercial reality.
Even for the most ardent European advocates of a Google break-up, a U.S. divestment order remains far more viable than a foreign one. “If a decision like this is taken, it could only come from the U.S.” said Christian Kroll, CEO of Berlin-based search engine Ecosia.
Given the political climate, it would be logical both politically and legally that U.S. enforcers move first on a Big Tech break-up, said Anne Witt, a professor at EDHEC Business School in Lille.
“The Trump administration has made clear that it will defend American firms against any foreign antitrust intervention.” Witt said. “This puts the European Commission in a very difficult place.”
When the Commission’s then–competition chief Margarethe Vestager floated a break-up of Google in its 2023 advertising technology abuse of dominance case, the proposal “sent shockwaves through the European antitrust community,” Witt said.
Not only had the EU never broken up an American company before, it had also rarely reached for this nuclear option when big European firms were caught behaving badly.
But the geopolitical climate has changed, with a combative U.S. president in office and an EU focused on competitiveness and security. Despite the EU’s muscular proposal, officials are still mulling the case two years later.
That’s not to say a European-led break-up of Google is unthinkable.
“Europe has been leading on this for some time,” said Maarten Pieter Schinkel, an academic at University of Amsterdam, who points to the Commission’s 2017 Google Shopping case as a “small initial step” that set regulators on the path to more ambitious structural remedies.
In that case, and the cases against Google and Meta that followed, European enforcers sought quasi-structural remedies — like the introduction of Chinese walls or interoperability measures — designed to give competitors a way in, he said, an approach codified in the Digital Markets Act.
The future of Chrome
The imminent ruling from the U.S. district court — whether it prescribes a break-up of Google or more modest measures like the nixing of its multi-billion dollar default contracts with Apple and Samsung — will mark only the beginning of a potentially lengthy process.
While any divestiture order could be tied up in appeals until 2028, according to Portuese, some firms — almost all American — are already eyeing bids for one of the internet’s most valuable pieces of real estate.
Earlier this month, artificial intelligence startup Perplexity AI announced that it would make a $34.5 billion offer for Chrome should the judge follow the U.S. Department of Justice’s prescription.
“The Perplexity offer is a joke, they should add another zero on the end,” said Kroll, noting that as an independent entity, Chrome could be “one of the most valuable companies on the planet.”
But there are few suitable buyers who would have the sufficient financial power to buy Chrome while not creating further competition issues, said Kroll. “If you sell Chrome to Meta or OpenAI, the power dominance would shift from one Big Tech player to another.”
Kroll, whose non-profit Ecosia is known for using its revenues to plant trees, last week made an audacious pitch: Hand a newly untethered Chrome over to a foundation — a U.S. one — to make it geopolitically palatable, and let Ecosia run it on the foundation’s behalf.
But of all the names circulating as serious commercial bidders, exactly zero are European.
Knock-on effects
Not everyone is convinced that a forced sale of Chrome is the right approach, regardless of how it’s done.
Developer group Open Web Advocacy said a forced sale could bring account “severe and deeply damaging” collateral damage to the web ecosystem.
Such a divestment would be “an absolute disaster for the web” and investment in the open web would “take a dive,” warned Chris Coyier, co-founder of CodePen.
Coyier argues that Google’s massive investment in web standards isn’t charity but an act of “economic self-interest,” and that capitalism runs on incentives, not benevolence.
The founder of independent browser Mozilla warned in court that a sale of Chrome could disrupt Google’s financing arrangements with independent browsers, ultimately pushing some of them in bankruptcy.
Google, for its part, has stated that the DOJ’s proposals are “unprecedented” and would harm American consumers and technological leadership.
“People don’t use Google because they have to — they use it because they want to,” said Google’s Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland in a blog post.
In the meantime, perhaps all Europe can do is watch.
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