Chrome relies on Google, so other companies cannot effectively develop Chrome, says person in charge
Google is being sued by the US Department of Justice for
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The US Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Google alleging that its search business violates antitrust laws. As part of this lawsuit, Google's Chrome general manager, Tabriz, testified in court that 'Chrome represents a 17-year partnership between Chrome developers and the rest of Google,' and that 'any attempt to unravel this partnership would be unprecedented.'
Tabriz points out that Chrome's incognito mode and features such as notifying users if their passwords are leaked rely on shared infrastructure from Google, not just Chrome.
Therefore, Tabriz testified, 'I don't think it will be possible to recreate the original Chrome (if Chrome is separated from Google).'
In August 2024, Judge Amit P. Mehta, the judge in the case asking whether Google's search business violates antitrust laws, ruled that Google violated antitrust laws, saying that 'Google's actions constitute a monopoly in general search services and general search text advertising.' In that ruling,
In response, the Department of Justice has asked Google to bar it from selling its Chrome business, from sharing any of the data it collects for search results, and from paying other companies to be set as the default search engine.
Chrome is a web browser developed by Google and is the most widely used browser in the world. According to StatCounter, which analyzes web traffic, 66% of the world's users will use Chrome as of March 2025.
Chrome is built on the open source
James Mickens, a computer science expert at the Department of Justice, said Google could easily sell Chrome to another company without compromising its functionality, and Minges, a computer science professor at Harvard University, said, 'Selling Chrome is technically feasible, and there would be no significant loss if the company were to transfer ownership.'
Minges pointed out that even if Chrome is separated from Google, 'Google will still have an incentive to continue contributing technology to Chromium, which is the basis of its own browser and its competitors' browsers. Google also uses some of Chromium's functions when loading web pages on Android.
According to Tabriz, Google has contributed more than 90% of Chromium's code since 2015. 'Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Chromium. To date, no other companies have contributed to Chromium's development in a meaningful way,' he said.
Google is also working on adding artificial intelligence (AI) to Chrome. Tabriz acknowledged that the default AI assistant available in Chrome is set to Gemini at the time of writing, saying, 'Most browsers are experimenting with AI and releasing features.'
Internal Google documents also reveal that the company plans to turn Chrome into an 'agent browser' - a browser that will incorporate AI agents to automate tasks and perform actions like filling out forms, taking surveys, and shopping.
'We envision a multi-agent future where Chrome deeply integrates with and prioritizes Gemini as the primary agent, enabling users to interact with multiple agents across the web in both consumer and enterprise environments,' Tabriz said.
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in Software, Web Service, Posted by logu_ii