Using “the Internet” sometimes seems disconcertingly synonymous with using Google. Google Search, the most popular search engine on the planet, indexes the open Internet, driving traffic to Web sites, and Google Ads provides the revenue that publishers survive on. Gmail is how some two billion people receive their e-mail; many Gmail in-boxes have been accumulating messages for a decade or more. Last, but certainly not least, the company’s browser, Google Chrome, is what a staggering three billion people use to navigate the Internet. According to some estimates, Google holds nearly ninety per cent market share in search engines in the U.S. Chrome, in turn, provides the audience data that Google’s ads leverage to target users, and links the company’s other services together. When you’re using Chrome, it is smoothest and easiest to also use Google’s search, mail, and even new generative-A.I. programs such as Gemini. Google Chrome is the top of a slippery funnel that users slide down, deeper into the Google ecosystem—which is precisely why, following a landmark antitrust ruling, the United States Department of Justice is trying to wrest Chrome away from the company.
In August, a D.C. district court concluded that, when it comes to search services and online advertising, “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” Last week, the D.O.J. released its proposals for how the problems should be remedied. It noted that Google has “deprived rivals” of “critical distribution channels” and “distribution partners” for competing search engines. To remedy that, the D.O.J. argued that Google should be forced to sell or spin off Chrome into an independent business that would, according to a Bloomberg analyst, be worth fifteen to twenty billion dollars. The D.O.J. also recommended that Google cease existing arrangements whereby the company pays competitors, including Apple and Samsung, billions of dollars to guarantee that Google Search is the default search engine on their devices, and that Google be forced to license its search results to its direct competitors at “marginal cost” as well as share data about its users and ads for free.
If these proposals are implemented, Google’s granular proprietary information about the landscape of the Internet would become more or less open-source. New search engines would have more of a shot at catching up to Google, using Google’s own data. Startups could offer new interfaces for Google Search or new ways to filter the company’s search results. In a blog post from November 21st, Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, wrote that the D.O.J.’s proposal was “extreme” and would “deliberately hobble people’s ability to access Google Search.” In reality, it would allow users to make more of an independent choice about which search engines and online software to use.
Google currently gives preferential treatment to its own products by controlling the default settings on its popular online software. Google Search gives prominence to Google Maps, which in turn highlights Google reviews of local businesses. With the D.O.J. proposal, users would instead have to opt in to Google Search. The new rules would, Walker wrote, “literally require us to install not one but two separate choice screens before you could access Google Search on a Pixel phone you bought.” In practice, users would likely have to do nothing more than press two buttons to agree to using Google, while also being offered alternatives such as Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo. Given Google’s name recognition and the efficacy of its products, it seems very likely that most users would simply continue to choose its products over those of its competitors. The imposed restrictions would likely end up looking similar to the pop-ups on Web sites that ask users if they want to accept cookies and have their data tracked, a system that was mandated in recent years by European Union regulation. (Nationwide, the U.S. has no such regulation, though some states, including California, do, and many digital platforms simply apply the policy to all of their global users.) When prompted by such pop-ups, most people reflexively opt in.
Walker wrote that the anti-monopoly requirements would amount to “unprecedented government overreach.” Yet in 2001, Microsoft weathered a similar antitrust lawsuit and judgment involving its Web-browser integration. Microsoft ended up settling, agreeing to share some of its source code with other businesses; it remains one of the biggest companies in the tech industry, and has recently been revitalized with its investment in OpenAI. In the case of Google, splitting Chrome off may turn out to be the least invasive option: if Chrome is not divested, or if the separation proves ineffective against Google’s monopoly, then the plaintiffs suggest that Google also divest Android—the operating system that runs on more than three billion phones worldwide. Nothing so dramatic will necessarily happen, though; Judge Amit Mehta, of the D.C. district court, is not expected to rule on the case until next summer, and it will likely go through lengthy appeals processes. (The second Trump Administration seems to have a cozy relationship with Silicon Valley, though Donald Trump’s pick for F.C.C. chairman, Brendan Carr, has loudly called out Google, as well as other tech giants, for being part of a “censorship cartel.”)
In the meantime, power in the industry may shift regardless. Even without the antitrust ruling, Google’s monopolistic grip looks shakier today than it has in decades. Google Search’s market share is actually down a few percentage points compared with a few years ago; Bing has been slowly gaining some traction, though its market share remains below ten per cent. And generative artificial intelligence, which has been on the rise since ChatGPT was released in November of 2022, is threatening the primacy of the classic search interface that Google more or less invented. The search functions and the browsers of the future may look less like an ordered encyclopedia of what has been published online than like a magic mirror that reflects a machine-generated composite of content. Entire new search interfaces are being built around artificial intelligence, including Perplexity and Arc (made by the Browser Company), which uses A.I. to filter and reconstitute Web sites, serving up only the parts most relevant to a given query. Google, Microsoft, and Meta are all engaged in a race to develop the best product for A.I. search, but the technology is so disruptive to the industry that the legacy brands may very well lose out in the end. One unexpected competitor could swoop in with a new technology that catches on—just as Google did in the late nineties with search.
One of Google’s arguments against the antitrust ruling is that A.I. is making its business more liable to competition than its government critics think it is. In some ways, the company is right. Generative A.I. may present more of an existential threat going forward than any government regulation. Almost certainly, it will overhaul the user experience on the Internet far more dramatically than a few new search-bar options ever could. ♦
