Google on May 30 asked a US federal judge to reject a proposal that would require the company to spin off its Chrome browser, a remedy aimed at reducing its dominance in online search.
The final arguments between the parties took place in federal court in Washington, where Judge Amit Mehta is considering “remedial measures” after he issued a landmark ruling last year that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in the online search market.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) asked Judge Mehta to force Google to divest its Chrome browser, arguing that the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) will further cement Google's position as the "default gateway" to the Internet.
In addition, the US government also asked Google to end exclusive agreements with partners such as Apple and Samsung, which allowed Google's search engine to become the default on these companies' devices.
It is also at the heart of a years-long lawsuit against the Silicon Valley tech giant.
The May 30 hearing marked the end of a three-week legal process to present final legal arguments before Judge Mehta.
Google attorney John Schmidtlein said there was no evidence that users would choose another search engine without the exclusivity agreements.
He cited that Verizon installed Chrome on smartphones despite owning the Yahoo! search engine and having no contractual ties with Google.
In response, US Justice Department attorney David Dahlquist argued that Apple – a partner that receives billions of dollars from Google to maintain Chrome as the default browser on iPhones – had repeatedly requested more flexibility but was denied.
Google is now arguing that the demand to divest its Chrome browser and be forced to sell its Android operating system goes beyond the scope of the original lawsuit, which focused only on online search market share.
The request to split Chrome comes as many competitors such as Microsoft, ChatGPT and Perplexity are leveraging generative AI to provide search results directly from the Internet, replacing the traditional search model.
The antitrust lawsuit against Google in the online search space was filed five years ago, before ChatGPT launched and sparked a wave of AI investment.
Currently, Google is among the leading technology corporations investing heavily in AI and integrating this technology into its search engine as well as other online services./.
Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/google-phan-doi-yeu-cau-tach-trinh-duyet-chrome-trong-vu-kien-tai-my-post1041730.vnp
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