Earlier this week the DOJ’s (Department of Justice) plans to make Google sell off its Chrome browser were revisited. Now that the department’s demands have been made public it turns out they’re even more punishing than previously thought.
Not only does the DOJ want Google and Chrome separated, it also wants to ban the company from releasing another browser for at least five years. This is no doubt to let consumers get accustomed to Chrome’s new management instead of jumping ship for Chrome 2.0 or something similar.
In addition the DOJ also wants to restrict Google from being able to pay third parties to make its search engine the default option on their browsers. All of this has been put forward to break Google’s monopoly over the search industry. Google, naturally, has called the measures extreme and radical and also warned that doing this would endanger the privacy of U.S. citizens.
Google will remember this. | Image credit — Getty Images
The DOJ’s original proposal was far more severe: demanding Google to sell off its Android operating system. Fortunately for Google the DOJ agreed that such a proposal was going too far and instead settled for the sale of Chrome. Other demands also include restrictions that would force Google to decouple Android from the company’s own services, including Search and the Play Store.
Judge Amit Mehta — who has previously ruled against Google’s search monopoly — will be presiding over the case. The hearing is set to take place in April of next year and Google will undoubtedly try to lessen the severity of the DOJ’s demands.
This whole ordeal has drawn both praise and criticism alike. While some agree with the DOJ and wish to see Google’s monopoly broken, others claim this will only give non-American alternatives an unfair advantage. There is also debate over whether Google should be forced to sell something it made and owns but that argument gets into economic ideologies beyond the scope of this story.
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Lastly, the DOJ has also demanded that Google be more transparent with advertisers that use its platform. Said advertisers should also be given an option to opt out of their data being used to train Google’s AI models.
It’s going to be quite odd seeing a Chrome browser that’s not owned by Google but the judge will have to rule against Google first before such a thing can happen.
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Abdullah is an ardent believer in the future of VR, and can't wait to see what more it brings to the table as technology improves. He enjoys covering new software releases in the XR industry, as well as major news about hardware and companies focused on VR.
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