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You'll all pay for this, just wait and see, says a petulant Google as it's rumored to be forced to sell its Chrome browser by the US Justice Department.
Chrome is a darling of the tech industry because techies love its customizability. But that does come at a cost in battery life, and what Google can and can’t do with your data.
Consequently, when you have a problem with a website, you’re often told to switch to Chrome. For example, our own content management system works slightly better in Chrome than in Safari.
In any case, Google isn’t the only corporation facing off with the Justice Department. While Apple is filing motions and not saying a word today that hasn’t been vetted by lawyers, Google is practically screaming.
“The government putting its thumb on the scale in this way would hurt consumers, developers, and American tech leadership at a time when it’s needed most,” Google CEO Leigh-Anne Mulholland said in a statement seen by BBC News.
“The Justice Department continues to advance a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case,” she added.
Google argues that selling Chrome to a third party would make it much harder to keep the browser secure. However, that ship sailed years ago, and Chrome won the most vulnerable browser trophy in 2022.
This also implies that Google is currently protecting us from external threats, which is hopefully true, but could definitely be a distraction. Since Google Chrome was revealed to be intentionally bypassing Apple’s privacy features in 2023,
As such, selling the browser would potentially leave Chrome users less confident in where their data is coming from and stored. There is also the question of who would buy it, and whether they would have anywhere near Google’s resources to continue developing it.
The potential forced sale of Chrome comes after the US agreed with the Justice Department that Google has a monopoly on search and advertising. Another finding that emerged from the Justice Department's lawsuit against Google was that the company pays Apple up to $20 billion annually to keep it as the default search engine on iPhones.
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