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A federal judge just ruled that Google does not have to sell its Chrome browser, and Googlers seem pretty happy about it.
On Tuesday, US District Judge Amit Mehta handed down penalties to Google after ruling its search business a monopoly. The US Justice Department, which filed the suit against Google in 2020, had proposed forcing the company to sell its Chrome browser. The judge ruled against this—one of several decisions made in the landmark antitrust case.
Google employees have been lighting up the company’s central internal message board, filling it with jokes about the soaring stock and how Google no longer has to part with its beloved browser, per messages and memes reviewed by Business Insider.
One employee edited a caption of a scene from “The Lord of the Rings” to read “Looks like Chrome is back on the menu, boys!” Another played on an iconic scene from the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street,” with Chrome — rather than Leonardo DiCaprio — announcing, “I’m not ******* leaving.”
Several other posts celebrated Chrome’s remaining part of Google. One employee took a photo of a sign from one of the offices that read, “You belong here,” adding the word “Chrome.”
A Chrome sell-off could have been very painful for Google. The browser has become a huge distribution channel for the company’s search advertising business, sucking up vast amounts of useful data.
Google’s stock popped more than 6% in after-hours trading — something that Googlers also joked about inside the company.
“Sending support to Googlers who sold $GOOG recently,” read one caption on a picture of a candle.
Several employees who spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity said they didn’t think the outcome would affect them much and that it would be business as usual for most Googlers.
“I think people are mostly happy about the stock,” said one of them.
The list of remedies handed down to Google on Tuesday included a ban on any exclusive deals to make its search engine the default, though it stopped short of banning payments to partners completely. Google was also ordered to share some of its search data with rivals.
A Google spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
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