In this Sept. 24, 2019, file photo, a sign is shown on a Google
building at their campus in Mountain View, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu,This week of the landmark antitrust trial set to reshape Google’s dominance over internet search wrapped on Friday, with a Google Chrome executive testifying how important the browser is for the tech giant.
The Justice Department has urged U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to order Chrome to be sold off to remedy Google’s monopoly over internet search. Several executives from Yahoo, OpenAI and Perplexity have expressed interest in their testimony this week.
Parisa Tabriz, Google’s vice president of engineering and general manager for Chrome, warned that breaking off the browser from Google would lead to significant performance issues for consumers and other developers who rely on its Chromium open-source browser project.
Several browsers, such as Microsoft Edge, Samsung Internet and Opera, are based on Chromium’s code. According to Google, the project is meant to make the internet “safer, faster and more stable” for users.
Tabriz testified that breaking off Chrome would be difficult, if not impossible, because of how much the browser relies on Google’s infrastructure and resources, such as its password manager, which runs on Google’s servers. Other features like safe browsing and auto-fill also rely on Google’s infrastructure.
“I can’t think of a more complex and high-risk project,” Tabriz said, noting that Chrome is the product of 17 years of interconnected work across Google that would require a lot of untangling.
During his time on the stand Wednesday, Perplexity chief business officer Dmitry Shevelenko testified that the artificial intelligence company would be interested in purchasing Chrome and would be able to continue operating it without a drop in quality or charging users.
Shevelenko was subpoenaed to testify on the stand — after first turning down an offer to testify voluntarily, over fears of retribution by Google — and described a “jungle gym” when users try to set Perplexity AI as the default AI assistant on Android devices, where Google’s Gemini is default.
However, Shevelenko expressed concern that forcing Google to sell Chrome to a competitor, like OpenAI, could lead to the discontinuation of Chrome’s open-source model, known as Chromium, that many developers rely on.
The Justice Department has argued that Chrome is one of the largest fruits from its illegal monopoly and should not be allowed to continue benefiting from it.
Chrome is the largest internet browser in the world, with 80% market share on Android devices, 68.4% on Microsoft and 60% on Macs, according to a Google document presented at trial. Meanwhile, Chrome has 12.9% on iPhones, where Apple’s Safari browser is preloaded, although Google is the default search engine.
The Justice Department has thus far focused on detailing how important Chrome is to Google for Mehta but has yet to call its divestiture expert, David Locala, to describe how the court could make the divestiture feasible. The government is set to rest its case before the end of the proceedings on Tuesday.
Tabriz highlighted the massive investment Google makes into Chromium, up to 90%, compared to other browser companies like Opera, who Tabriz said totals less than 10%.
She noted that many more products rely on Chromium, like Slack, WhatsApp, Android WebView and Ecosia.
The Justice Department has suggested that, if not bought, Chromium could become a “community-run” asset to maintain its quality, with potential support from Microsoft and Meta.
Yahoo Search general manager Brian Provost testified Thursday that the search company could easily purchase Chrome with backing from its owner, Apollo Global Management.
DuckDuckGo founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg estimated on the stand that Chrome would be worth approximately $50 billion, after noting that he would be interested for a smaller sum.
The Justice Department has proposed tandem remedies that would allow other search engines to compete with Google, such as making Google’s search index — the database the search engine relies on — its syndication and user-sided data available to competitors.
Weinberg expressed support for those proposals and suggested Mehta could anonymize the search data, like DuckDuckGo does, to protect users’ identities.
Google will begin calling its own witnesses next week, which includes high-profile tech executives like Google CEO Sundar Pichai and senior VP of services at Apple, Eduardo Cue, both of whom testified during the liability phase of the antitrust trial.
source
