Alphabet Inc’s Google slammed a US Justice Department plan to force it to sell its web browser as “excessive” and contrary to the law, urging a federal court judge to caution that it could stifle innovation and future investment. Don’t do it.
In a court filing late Friday, Google responded to the DOJ’s request and proposed its own remedy. The company said the proposed Chrome sale doesn’t fit with the company’s conduct, which the judge found illegal — which included exclusive contracts with browsers, smartphone makers and telecommunications carriers.
“Excessive remedies are discouraged” by the courts, the company said in its filing. Google said remedies for anti-competitive conduct “must be ‘of the same kind or class’ as the infringement.”
The Justice Department and a group of states last month asked Judge Amit Mehta to order Google to sell its Chrome web browser along with several other changes to the company’s business to improve competition in the online search market.
Google said that by any measure Apple Inc. Competing browsers like Google’s Safari “should have the freedom to make deals with whatever search engine they think is best for their users,” wrote Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs. In a blog post. Mehta found that it was illegal for Google to pay Apple and others to become the default browser provider.
Mulholland said Google’s proposal would still allow the company to split revenues with competing browsers, but would also allow multiple defaults on different platforms. This will allow device manufacturers to preload multiple search engines and not need to include Chrome and Google Search if they want to include other Google apps.
Google’s filing Friday is its first official response since Mehta was found earlier this year to have illegally monopolized the online search and advertising markets. The company has said it plans to appeal, but cannot do so until the case is over.
“If the DOJ finds that Google’s investment in Chrome, or our development of AI, or the way we crawl the Web, or develop our algorithms, is anti-competitive at all, then it would Could register cases. That didn’t happen,” Mulholland wrote.
The judge has scheduled a proceeding in April to decide how to fix the lack of competition in industries dominated by Google and has promised to make a final decision by August 2025.
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment and referred to the agency’s previous filings in the case.
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