Google’s Chrome Worth Up to $20 Billion If Judge Orders Sale

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’s Chrome Worth Up to $20 Billion If Judge Orders *****

Alphabet’s Chrome browser could go for as much as $20 billion (roughly Rs. 1,68,762 crore) if a judge agrees to a Justice Department proposal to sell the business, in what would be a historic crackdown on one of the world’s biggest tech companies.

The department will ask the judge, who ruled in August that

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

 the search market, to require measures related to artificial intelligence and its Android smartphone operating system, according to people familiar with the plans. 

Antitrust officials, along with states that have joined the case, also plan to recommend Wednesday that federal judge Amit Mehta impose data licensing requirements, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter. 

If Mehta accepts the proposals, they have the potential to reshape the online search market and the burgeoning AI industry. The case was filed under the first Trump administration and continued under President Joe Biden. It marks the most aggressive effort to rein in a technology company since Washington unsuccessfully sought to break up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. two decades ago. 

Owning the world’s most popular web browser is key for

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’s ads business. The company is able to see activity from signed-in users, and use that data to more effectively target promotions, which generate the bulk of its revenue.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

has also been using Chrome to direct users to its flagship AI product, Gemini, which has the potential to evolve from an answer-**** to an assistant that follows users around the web.

Should a ***** proceed, Chrome would be worth “at least $15 billion (roughly Rs. 1,26,571 crore) -$20 billion (roughly Rs. 1,68,762 crore), given it has over 3 billion monthly active users,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh. 

The price prospective buyers are willing to pay may depend on their ability to link Chrome to other services, said Bob O’Donnell of TECHnalysis Research. “It’s not directly monetsable,” he said. “It serves as a gateway to other things. It’s not clear how you measure that from a pure revenue-generating perspective.”

Lee-Anne Mulholland,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said the Justice Department “continues to push a ******** agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case.” She added, “the government putting its thumb on the scale in these ways would harm consumers, developers and ********* technological leadership at precisely the moment it is most needed.”

The Justice Department declined to comment. 

Chrome Access

Antitrust enforcers want the judge to order

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

to sell off Chrome because, as the most widely used browser worldwide, it represents a key access point through which many people use its search engine, the people said. 

The government has the option to decide whether a Chrome ***** is necessary at a later date if some of the other aspects of the remedy do not create a more competitive market, the people added. The Chrome browser controls about 61 percent of the market in the US, according to StatCounter, a web traffic analytics service. 

Government attorneys met with dozens of companies over the past three months as they prepared the recommendation. States are still considering adding some proposals and some details could change, the people said.

The antitrust officials pulled back from a more severe option that would have forced

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

to sell off Android, the people said.

Alphabet’s

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Bracing for Antitrust Rigmarole: Legal

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

The benefit of Chrome, which

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

doesn’t charge for directly, is partially in the convenience it provides users, by making their experience with

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

products more seamless, said Eric Schmidt, former

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

CEO, on CNBC. “Breaking up these companies is not going to fundamentally address the annoyance you have with them.”

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

said in a blog post that if other companies owned Chrome, they wouldn’t have the incentive to invest as heavily in it or keep it free, and would likely have to change its business model. 

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Appeal

Mehta’s August ruling that

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

broke antitrust laws in both online search and search text ads markets followed a 10-week trial last year. The company has said it plans to appeal. 

The judge has set a two-week hearing in April on what changes

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

must make to remedy the ******** behavior and plans to issue a final ruling by August 2025.

The agency and the states have settled on recommending that

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

be required to license the results and data from its popular search engine and give websites more options to prevent their content from being used by

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’s artificial intelligence products, said the people.

The antitrust enforcers are set to propose that

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

uncouple its Android smartphone operating system from its other products, including search and its

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Play mobile app store, which are now sold as a bundle, the people said. They are also prepared to seek a requirement that

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

share more information with advertisers and give them more control over where their ads appear.

Lawyers from the Justice Department and state attorneys general included all of those options in an initial filing in October, as well as a ban on the type of exclusive contracts that were at the center of the case against

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. 

A forced spinoff, if it happens, would also hinge on finding an interested buyer. Those who could afford and might want the property, like

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.com Inc., are also facing antitrust scrutiny that may prevent such a mega-deal. 

“My view is this is extremely unlikely,” Singh said in an email. But, he added, he could see a buyer like OpenAI, the maker of artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. “That would give it both distribution and an ads business to complement its consumer chatbot subscriptions.”

A merger with a US-based AI player may more easily pass government scrutiny than another tech giant, said Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, digital advertising and media analyst at Emarketer. It “could conceivably be approved by the government as a way to prioritize AI innovation and US posturing around AI on the global stage.”

AI Overviews

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

now displays artificial intelligence-based answers at the top of its search pages billed as “AI Overviews.” While websites can opt-out of having their information used by

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

to create AI models, they can’t afford to opt out of the overviews because that would risk pushing them down in search results, making it ******* to reach their customers.

Website publishers have complained that the feature dampens traffic and advertising dollars since users rarely click through to see the data being used to power those results.

Earlier:

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’s AI Search Gives Sites Dire Choice: Share Data or ****

Regarding data licensing, the antitrust enforcers plan to propose two options: That

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

sell the underlying “click and query” data and also separately syndicate its search results, according to the people. 

The company currently sells syndicated search results, but with restrictions, such as preventing their use on mobile. Forcing

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

to syndicate its search results would allow rival search engines and AI startups to quickly improve their quality, while the data feed would allow others to build their own search index.

© 2024 Bloomberg LP

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#Googles #Chrome #Worth #Billion #Judge #Orders #*****

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up