Google Forced to Sell Chrome? DOJ's Bombshell Breakup Plan | Pivot

The hosts argue that monetary penalties and government monitors are too easy for tech giants to absorb or ignore, whereas forced divestitures directly reduce market power and change incentives.

Despite claims that Chrome is merely an appendage to Google, its roughly two-thirds share of the browser market represents massive user attention that many firms could monetize competitively.

Blocking Google from paying companies like Apple to be the default search engine would reduce automatic steering to Google and create more room for rival search providers.

With search described as perhaps the largest, ultra–high-margin business in the world, concentrating that profit and data advantage in one player raises prices (rents) on advertisers and stifles innovation.

Galloway contends that past U.S. antitrust breakups led to more valuable companies, more consumer choice, lower economic ‘rents,’ and better opportunities for employees, with only controlling shareholders losing out.