Google has gotten its first taste of remedies that Donald Trump’s Department of Justice plans to pursue to break up the tech giant’s monopoly in search. In the first filing since Trump allies took over the department, government lawyers backed off a key proposal submitted by the Biden DOJ. The government won’t ask the court to force Google to sell off its AI investments, and the way it intends to handle Android is changing. However, the most serious penalty is intact—Google’s popular Chrome browser is still on the chopping block.

“Google’s illegal conduct has created an economic goliath, one that wreaks havoc over the marketplace to ensure that—no matter what occurs—Google always wins,” the DOJ filing says. To that end, the government maintains that Chrome must go if the playing field is to be made level again.

The DOJ is asking the court to force Google to promptly and fully divest itself of Chrome, along with any data or other assets required for its continued operation. It is essentially aiming to take the Chrome user base—consisting of some 3.4 billion people—away from Google and hand it to a competitor. The government will vet any potential buyers to ensure the sale does not pose a national security threat. During the term of the judgment, Google would not be allowed to release any new browsers. However, it may continue to contribute to the open source Chromium project.

  • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    23 hours ago

    Like maybe cut those executive salaries down a significant amount to start Mozilla because holy shit does Mozilla pay it’s executives a lot vs how much the company makes.

      • overload@sopuli.xyz
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        17 hours ago

        This is the biggest thing stopping me from donating to Firefox, or Mozilla in general. CEO salary should not be that high for basically a not-for-profit.

        I will donate to Wikipedia, signal, KDE, or other projects that I’m passionate about. But it definitely leaves a sour taste if you hear that the money is not well spent.