The US Department of Justice (DOJ) is reportedly looking to force Google Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) to part with its Chrome browser as part of an ongoing antitrust case, according to a Bloomberg report. Former Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chief strategist and Abundance Institute’s head of AI policy Neil Chilson joins Market Domination to discuss his learnings about the ongoing antitrust case.
A federal judge ruled that Google maintained a monopoly on search through its traffic acquisition agreements, violating antitrust laws. The DOJ is reportedly asking the same judge to force Alphabet to sell Chrome.
Chilson tells Julie Hyman and Josh Lipton of Yahoo Finance that he thinks the DOJ is “trying to put everyone in place right now, as there’s a lot of uncertainty ahead. The DOJ will be under… different leadership by then.” [Judge Amit] Mehta decides this. So this I think is a political move to deflate a trial balloon to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to be very aggressive in this space. What does everyone think of it?’
The expert explains that “the best solution,” in his opinion, would be “to fix what the judge sees as a competition problem, without having possible unintended consequences in other parts of the market, would be to limit Google’s ability to enter those types of contracts.”
“The problem here is that those contracts involve Google paying billions and billions of dollars to other companies, like Apple (AAPL) and Mozilla… And one thinks there’s a group [companies] They would like to continue to receive that money from Google and have been trying to think of other solutions that we can find.”
Watch the video above to hear more from Chilson about the Trump administration’s impact on Alphabet’s antitrust problems.
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This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.
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