The Justice Department and a group of states asked a federal court late Wednesday to force Google to sell Chrome, its popular web browser, a move that could fundamentally alter the $2 trillion company’s business and reshape competition on the internet
The request followed a landmark ruling in August by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that found Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search. Judge Mehta asked the Justice Department and the states that brought the antitrust case to submit solutions by the end of Wednesday to correct the search monopoly.
Beyond the sale of Chrome, the government asked Judge Mehta to give Google a choice: Either sell Android, its smartphone operating system, or be barred from making its services mandatory on phones that use Android to operate. If Google broke those terms, or the remedies failed to improve competition, the government could force the company to sell Android at a later date.
In a sweeping filing, the government also asked the judge to stop Google from entering into paid agreements with Apple and others to be the automatically selected search engine on smartphones and in browsers.
The court should also require Google to allow rival search engines to display the company’s results and have access to its data for a decade, the government said.
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