Divesting Chrome Won’t Solve Antitrust Issues — Browsers are Defensive Products
The U.S. government’s recent judgement that Google should divest from Chrome as part of its landmark antitrust case has raised eyebrows. But let’s be clear: Chrome isn’t just a browser for Google; it’s a defensive product that plays a crucial role in their ecosystem.
Chrome Reduces Google’s Costs
Without Chrome, hundreds of millions of users would likely turn to other browsers like Safari, Firefox, or Edge. Google would naturally need to be the default search engine on those platforms, which doesn’t come cheap. For example, Google currently pays Mozilla tens of millions of dollars annually to be the default on Firefox, which holds about 3% of the browser market. If Firefox’s share grew to, say, 10% in the absence of Chrome’s dominance, Google’s payments would scale accordingly into the hundreds of millions.
In 2022 alone, Google paid Apple a staggering $20 billion to be the default search engine on Safari across iPhones and Macs. That amount represents nearly 20% of Apple’s net income for that year. By maintaining Chrome’s dominance — approximately 60–65% on desktop and around 70% on mobile — Google significantly reduces these traffic acquisition costs, saving billions that would otherwise go to competitors.
Integration and User Retention Through Chrome
Most of Google’s profit comes from ads driven by user engagement with their products like Search, Maps, Gmail, and YouTube. Chrome isn’t just a browser; it’s the linchpin of Google’s ecosystem. When you use Chrome, you’re seamlessly signed into your Google account across all services as your browse. This integration means less friction for you and more valuable data for Google, which they use to personalize ads and enhance their services.
This tight integration doesn’t just save Google money; it locks users into an experience that’s hard to leave. By making everything work together so smoothly, Google makes it significantly tougher for competitors to lure users away.
Browsers Are Built to Defend Their Ecosystems
It’s not just Google playing this game. The big players — Apple with Safari, Microsoft with Edge, and Samsung with their own browser — all use browsers to defend their ecosystems.
• Apple’s Safari: Apple doesn’t want its customers’ primary app to be owned by someone else. Safari keeps users within Apple’s walled garden, emphasizing privacy and a seamless experience across Apple devices.
• Microsoft’s Edge: Microsoft wants better integration with its suite of productivity apps like Office 365 and, of course, to push more users toward Bing, where it can generate additional revenue.
• Samsung’s Browser: Pre-installed on Samsung devices, it promotes Samsung’s services and provides an optimized experience tailored to their hardware.
These companies aren’t investing in browsers just for fun; they need to ensure that the gateway to the internet isn’t controlled by a competitor. Browsers are gateways, and whoever owns the gateway controls the user experience, data flow, and ultimately, the profits.
The smaller browsers — Firefox, Opera, and Brave — have managed to create sustainable businesses, but none can match the user or developer base of the larger players. Of these three, only Brave might be able to sustain itself without payments from larger search engines. Opera, for example, made 43% of its revenue in 2018 from deals with Yandex and Google.
Divesting Chrome: A Thought Exercise
Imagine Google divesting from Chrome. How would they monetize those hundreds of millions of users? Sure, they could explore revenue streams like ads or charging fees for premium extensions — maybe even taking a cut from popular ones like Grammarly similiar to the Play Store. But without Google’s deep pockets and ecosystem integration, it’s hard to see Chrome maintaining its dominance ten years down the line.
Other big players would have greater incentives to push their strategies. With the current AI arms race, a supercharged, AI-powered browser that helps users write, consume, and browse the web more efficiently — and for free — could easily win. Meta could emerge as a serious contender in this emerging space if it continues following a similar strategy to Chrome’s original approach: open-source. They’ve already shown they’re willing to jump into crowded spaces with the competition falters — look at how quickly they launched Threads in response to Twitter’s decline.
Chrome succeeded in part because it created a super-fast, open-source browser that others could build upon (like Edge and Brave). This strategy helped developers create a more seamless web experience and made Chrome indispensable in its early dominance.
If the U.S. government were to force Chrome to divest, I think Chrome’s market share would erode as it lost what users perceive as essential. A new dominant player would likely emerge, leading to similar antitrust concerns a decade from now.
Alternatives to Divestiture
I think if Chrome were divested and operated as an independent company, the odds of it maintaining its dominance are slim. Without Google’s resources, Chrome would likely lose its edge in integrating the features users expect and adapting to shifting technologies like AI.
If the goal is to stop Google’s search monopoly, I agree with much of what the judge suggests, except for divesting critical assets like Chrome. Simply asking users which search engine they would like to be the default, as the judge suggests on mobile, should also be sufficient on Chrome.
Prohibiting payments to be the default search engine and forcing Google to make its search index available to anyone for a reasonable price could help give potential new search engines a leg up. But these changes could harm smaller browsers like Mozilla and Opera, which rely on these payments to survive.
The judge seems to be betting that companies like Apple or Samsung would eventually create their own search engines if they no longer received payments or incentives from Google. Today, Apple benefits immensely from the $20 billion Google pays them annually — pure profit they’d struggle to replace with their own search engine. However, if that money disappeared, Apple might have a strong incentive to develop its own product.
Apple might be right that it would be difficult to replace that revenue in the short term, but five years of investment could yield a product generating even more revenue than Google’s payments. This is the kind of competition Judge Mehta seems to want to incentivize.
A Middle Ground
If the Department of Justice wants to pursue an antitrust agenda, it might be wiser to taper off or cap how much Google can pay other browsers to be the default search engine. This approach could encourage companies like Apple or Samsung to invest in their own search engines while allowing smaller browsers time to adapt and develop new revenue streams.
The judge is clearly trying to create a market environment where it’s easier for companies to build competitive search engines. But before implementing measures that could potentially eliminate jobs at Mozilla, Opera, and other smaller browser companies, it might be worth confirming that other major players actually plan to enter this market.
Search Engine Choice: A Limited Solution
An interesting aspect of the case is that the judge wants to let users choose between search engines like DuckDuckGo, Bing, Google, and Yahoo. But let’s be honest, my guess is around 85–90% of people would still choose Google because it’s far and away the best search experience (despite all the grumblings folks seem to have these days). So, all the judge might accomplish is saving Google a lot of money on their traffic acquisition costs without necessarily improving competition.
The real issue isn’t whether users can pick a different search engine — it’s whether there’s a viable alternative to Google that feels just as good or better. Until a strong competitor with deep distribution channels emerges, Google will keep dominating, default search engine deals or not.
Final Thoughts
After reading Judge Mehta’s ruling, I suspect he knows Chrome won’t be divested. This proposal feels more like a bargaining chip to secure other, more reasonable remedies such as prohibiting payment or other incentives for default search placement and making Google search index available to competitors.
If Chrome were divested, it might survive as a standalone business due to its massive user base. But I think would eventually be acquired by another large company like Meta or OpenAI looking for access to a ludicrously large audience to push their agenda and defend their own interests. Billions of users on a product that just got its head cut off could be an incredibly strategic acquisition target for a newcomer ready to enter the big leagues — if Judge Mehta allows acquisitions in his final judgement.
Locking down an incentivized competitor — like Apple, Meta, or Samsung — and ensuring they enter the search market might be the most effective way to spur competition and reduce Google’s search dominance.
