Washington:

The US government late Wednesday asked a judge to order the dismantling of Google by selling its widely used Chrome browser in a major antitrust crackdown on the internet giant.

In a court filing, the US Department of Justice urged a shake-up of Google’s business that includes banning deals for Google to be the default search engine on smartphones and preventing it from exploiting its Android mobile operating system.

Antitrust officials said in the filing that Google should also be made to sell Android if proposed remedies don’t prevent the tech company from using its control of the mobile operating system to its advantage.

Calling for the breakup of Google marks a profound change by the US government’s regulators, which have largely left tech giants alone since failing to break up Microsoft two decades ago.

Google is expected to make its recommendations in a filing next month and both sides will make their case at a hearing in April before US District Court Judge Amit Mehta.

Regardless of Judge Mehta’s eventual decision, Google is expected to appeal the ruling, prolonging the process for years and potentially leaving the final say to the US Supreme Court.

The case could also be upended by the arrival of President-elect Donald Trump to the White House in January.

His administration will likely replace the current team in charge of the DOJ’s antitrust division.

The newcomers could choose to carry on with the case, ask for a settlement with Google, or abandon the case altogether.

Trump has blown hot and cold in how to handle Google and the dominance of big tech companies. 

He has accused the search engine of bias against conservative content, but has also signaled that a forced break up of the company would be too large a demand by the US government. 

Too Extreme?

Determining how to address Google’s wrongs is the next stage of the landmark antitrust trial that saw the company in August ruled a monopoly by Judge Mehta.

Google has dismissed the idea of a breakup as “radical.”

Adam Kovacevich, chief executive of industry trade group Chamber of Progress, said the government’s demands were “fantastical” and defied legal standards, instead calling for narrowly tailored remedies.

The trial, which concluded last year, scrutinized Google’s confidential agreements with smartphone manufacturers, including Apple. 

These deals involve substantial payments to secure Google’s search engine as the default option on browsers, iPhones and other devices.

The judge determined that this arrangement provided Google with unparalleled access to user data, enabling it to develop its search engine into a globally dominant platform. 

From this position, Google expanded its tech and data-gathering empire to include the Chrome browser, Maps and the Android smartphone operating system.

According to the judgment, Google controlled 90 percent of the US online search market in 2020, with an even higher share, 95 percent, on mobile devices.

The US government currently has five cases pending against big tech over antitrust concerns after the Biden administration adopted a tough stance on reining in the dominance of the companies.

If carried through by the Trump administration, the cases against Amazon, Meta, and Apple, as well as two against Google, could take years to litigate.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Washington DC:

Alphabet Inc.’s Google might have to sell Chrome, the world’s most widely used browser. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) reportedly wants the court to order Alphabet Inc. to sell off the browser to dismantle the monopoly Google has over the internet search market and related advertising. Google, meanwhile, said that if it is forced to sell Chrome, the move would harm its consumers and businesses. 

Last month, the Department of Justice filed papers in the court saying it was considering enforcing “structural remedies” to prevent Google from using some of its products. On Wednesday, the antitrust enforcers will propose the measure to a judge, according to a report by Bloomberg. 

Chrome holds almost 90 per cent share of the global search engine market as of October, according to StatCounter. Moreover, it controls about 61 per cent of the US market.

Case Against Google’s Monopoly

The DoJ brought the case against Google during US president-elect Donald Trump’s first four-year term. In a landmark ruling in August, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google operates an online search monopoly and has been considering what remedies or penalties to impose.

Since then, prosecutors have suggested several potential ways forward in the case, including ending billions of dollars with exclusive agreements that Google has with Apple and other companies to remain the default search engine on their tablets and smartphones, and divesting parts of its business, such as its Android operating system.

On Wednesday, the DoJ is likely to go ahead with several of those proposals, including one that requires Google to divest its Chrome browser. The antitrust officials, along with states that have joined the case, are also planning to recommend that federal judge Amit Mehta impose data licensing requirements on Google, the Bloomberg reported quoting sources. 

Should a sale proceed, Chrome would be worth “at least USD 15 – USD 20 billion, given it has over 3 billion monthly active users,” according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh. 

Google’s Response

Google has called the proposal ‘radical’ and said it would harm its consumers and businesses in the US and also shake American competitiveness in artificial intelligence.

Previously, the company has denied operating a monopoly in the online search market. Responding to the DoJ’s filing in October, Google has said that “splitting off” parts of its business like Chrome or Android would “break them”.

“Breaking them off would change their business models, raise the cost of devices, and undermine Android and Google Play in their robust competition with Apple’s iPhone and App Store,” BBC quoted the company as saying. 

Now, Google is reportedly planning an appeal after US District Judge Amit Mehta makes his final ruling by August 2025. The company will have a chance to make its proposal in December.
 

New York:

 A U.S. appeals court said Google must face a revived lawsuit by Google Chrome users who said the company collected their personal information without permission, after they chose not to synchronize their browsers with their Google accounts.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the lower court judge who dismissed the proposed class action should have assessed whether reasonable Chrome users consented to letting Google collect their data when they browsed online.

Tuesday’s 3-0 decision followed Google’s agreement last year to destroy billions of records to settle a lawsuit claiming the Alphabet unit tracked people who thought they were browsing privately, including in Chrome’s “Incognito” mode.

Neither Google nor its lawyers immediately responded to requests for comment.

Matthew Wessler, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said he was pleased with the decision and looked forward to a trial.

The proposed class covers Chrome users since July 27, 2016 who did not sync their browsers with their Google accounts.

They said Google should have honored Chrome’s privacy notice, which said users “don’t need to provide any personal information to use Chrome” and Google would not receive such information unless they turned on the “sync” function.

The lower court judge concluded that Google’s general privacy policy allowing data collection governed, because the Mountain View, California-based company would have collected the plaintiffs’ information regardless of which browsers they used.

In Tuesday’s decision, Circuit Judge Milan Smith called that focus misplaced.

“Here, Google had a general privacy disclosure yet promoted Chrome by suggesting that certain information would not be sent to Google unless a user turned on sync,” Smith wrote. “A reasonable user would not necessarily understand that they were consenting to the data collection at issue.”

The appeals court returned the case to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, who had dismissed it in December 2022.

Google’s settlement related to Incognito let users sue the company individually for damages. Tens of thousands of users in California alone have since done so in that state’s courts.

The case is Calhoun et al v Google LLC, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 22-16993.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Google is planning to keep third-party cookies in its Chrome browser, it said on Monday, after years of pledging to phase out the tiny packets of code meant to track users on the internet.

The major reversal follows concerns from advertisers – the company’s biggest source of income – saying the loss of cookies in the world’s most popular browser will limit their ability to collect information for personalizing ads, making them dependent on Google’s user databases.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority had also scrutinized Google’s plan over concerns it would impede competition in digital advertising.

“Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time,” Anthony Chavez, vice president of the Google-backed Privacy Sandbox initiative, said in a blog post.

Since 2019, the Alphabet unit has been working on the Privacy Sandbox initiative aimed at enhancing online privacy while supporting digital businesses, with a key goal being the phase-out of third-party cookies.

Cookies are packets of information that allow websites and advertisers to identify individual web surfers and track their browsing habits, but they can also be used for unwanted surveillance.

In the European Union, the use of cookies is governed by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which stipulates that publishers secure explicit consent from users to store their cookies. Major browsers also give the option to delete cookies on command.

Chavez said Google was working with regulators such as the UK’s CMA and Information Commissioner’s Office as well as publishers and privacy groups on the new approach, while continuing to invest in the Privacy Sandbox program.

The announcement drew mixed reactions.

“Advertising stakeholders will no longer have to prepare to quit third-party cookies cold turkey,” eMarketer analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf said in a statement.

Lena Cohen, staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said cookies can lead to consumer harm, for instance predatory ads that target vulnerable groups. “Google’s decision to continue allowing third-party cookies, despite other major browsers blocking them for years, is a direct consequence of their advertising-driven business model,” Cohen said in a statement.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

San Francisco:

Google has agreed to delete a vast trove of search data to settle a suit that it tracked millions of US users who thought they were browsing the internet privately.

If a proposed settlement filed Monday in San Francisco federal court is approved by a judge, Google must “delete and/or remediate billions of data records” linked to people using the Chrome browser’s incognito mode, according to court documents.

“This settlement is an historic step in requiring dominant technology companies to be honest in their representations to users about how the companies collect and employ user data, and to delete and remediate data collected,” lawyer David Boies said in the filing.

A hearing is slated for July 30 before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is to decide whether to approve the deal that would let Google avoid a trial in the class-action suit.

The settlement calls for no cash damages to be paid but leaves an option for Chrome users who feel they were wronged to sue Google separately to get money.

The suit originally filed in June of 2020 sought at least $5 billion in damages.

“We are pleased to settle this lawsuit, which we always believed was meritless,” Google spokesman Jorge Castaneda said in a statement.

“We are happy to delete old technical data that was never associated with an individual and was never used for any form of personalization.”

The object of the lawsuit was the “Incognito Mode” in the Chrome browser that plaintiffs said gave users a false sense that what they were surfing online was not being tracked by the Silicon Valley tech firm.

But internal Google emails brought forward in the lawsuit demonstrated that users using incognito mode were being followed by the search and advertising behemoth for measuring web traffic and selling ads.

The lawsuit, filed in a California court, claimed Google’s practices had infringed on users’ privacy by intentionally deceiving them with the incognito option.

The original complaint alleged that Google had been given the “power to learn intimate details about individuals’ lives, interests, and internet usage.”

“Google has made itself an unaccountable trove of information so detailed and expansive that George Orwell could never have dreamed it,” it added.

The settlement requires Google, for the next five years, to block third-party tracking “cookies” by default in Incognito Mode.

Third-party cookies are small files which are used to target advertising by tracking web navigation and are placed by visited sites and not by the browser itself.

No cookies?

Google earlier this year began limiting third-party cookies for some users of its Chrome browser, a first step towards eventually abandoning the files that have raised privacy concerns.

Google announced in January 2020 that it would begin eliminating third-party cookies within two years, but the start has been delayed several times amid opposition from web media publishers.

Cookies have recently been subject to greater regulation, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation introduced in 2016 as well as regulations in California.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)