The New Yorker:

A landmark antitrust ruling could change the Internet’s power balance, but the industry is shifting regardless.

By Kyle Chayka

Using “the Internet” sometimes seems disconcertingly synonymous with using Google. Google Search, the most popular search engine on the planet, indexes the open Internet, driving traffic to Web sites, and Google Ads provides the revenue that publishers survive on. Gmail is how some two billion people receive their e-mail; many Gmail in-boxes have been accumulating messages for a decade or more. Last, but certainly not least, the company’s browser, Google Chrome, is what a staggering three billion people use to navigate the Internet. According to some estimates, Google holds nearly ninety per cent market share in search engines in the U.S. Chrome, in turn, provides the audience data that Google’s ads leverage to target users, and links the company’s other services together. When you’re using Chrome, it is smoothest and easiest to also use Google’s search, mail, and even new generative-A.I. programs such as Gemini. Google Chrome is the top of a slippery funnel that users slide down, deeper into the Google ecosystem—which is precisely why, following a landmark antitrust ruling, the United States Department of Justice is trying to wrest Chrome away from the company.

In August, a D.C. district court concluded that, when it comes to search services and online advertising, “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” Last week, the D.O.J. released its proposals for how the problems should be remedied. It noted that Google has “deprived rivals” of “critical distribution channels” and “distribution partners” for competing search engines. To remedy that, the D.O.J. argued that Google should be forced to sell or spin off Chrome into an independent business that would, according to a Bloomberg analyst, be worth fifteen to twenty billion dollars. The D.O.J. also recommended that Google cease existing arrangements whereby the company pays competitors, including Apple and Samsung, billions of dollars to guarantee that Google Search is the default search engine on their devices, and that Google be forced to license its search results to its direct competitors at “marginal cost” as well as share data about its users and ads for free.

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