US authorities can force Google to sell the Chrome browser to combat the IT-company monopoly

The US Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutors of the States Antimonopoly Investigation against Google and are going to file a lawsuit with the demand to oblige Google to hand over the Chrome browser and part of the company's advertising business. This was reported by Politico with reference to sources familiar with the course of the investigation.

The plans of the US authorities to file a lawsuit against Google were reported at the beginning of this year. According to the publication, the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor Generals turned to the competitors of the search engine and third parties with the question of which part of the Google business should be sold. The addressees of the appeals called the Chrome browser, whose share in the United States accounts for 81% of search queries on computers and 94% on mobile devices, writes TJ .

The publication also states that Google can oblige to sell part of the advertising business or cancel a number of previous transactions to buy companies engaged in online advertising. So, in recent years, Google bought DoubleClick, Admob, Invite Media and Admeld services. These transactions allowed the search engine to cover all the stages of buying and selling advertising on the Internet.

Recall that last week the subcommittee on the antimonopoly legislation of the House of Representatives of the US Congress issued a 449-page report based on the results of the 16 months of investigation of the activities of Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon. The authors of the report came to the conclusion that all four companies undermine competition in the market and are monopolists in their areas.

So, Google was accused of monopoly in the field of search and search advertising, since it is the search engine from Google by default that is used in browsers and on mobile devices. The data of users that the company collects allows it to strengthen its leadership and receive additional advertising income. Google did not agree with the claims of congressmen.

The report proposes to divide large IT companies using changes in antimonopoly legislation. In particular, we are talking about both the structural separation of IT giants and the introduction of a ban on work in an adjacent business. These sentences are not spelled out in detail, but, apparently, the authors of the report consider it necessary to turn services belonging to Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon into independent companies.