US Justice Department will ask judge to force Google to sell Chrome: Report

The US Justice Department will ask a judge to force Alphabet Inc.'s Google to sell its Chrome internet browser, according to media reports on Monday.

The department will ask the judge, who ruled in August that Google had built an illegal monopoly over internet searches, to require measures related to artificial intelligence and its Android smartphone operating system, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the plans.

In October, Google, in a statement from Vice President Lee-Anne Mulholland, said: "DOJ's (Department of Justice's) radical and sweeping proposals risk hurting consumers, businesses, and developers."

In a statement in January, the Justice Department said that it along with the attorneys general of the states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Virginia filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Google for “monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology product.”

“As alleged in the complaint, over the past 15 years, Google has engaged in a course of anticompetitive and exclusionary conduct that consisted of neutralizing or eliminating ad tech competitors through acquisitions; wielding its dominance across digital advertising markets to force more publishers and advertisers to use its products; and thwarting the ability to use competing products,” the statement said.

In 2020, the Justice Department filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Google for “monopolizing” search and search advertising, which are different markets from the digital advertising technology markets at issue in the lawsuit filed today.