After a judge ruled they violated the U.S.

Sherman Act of 1890, Google was cutting unfair deals for its search engine to crush competition across the entire technology spectrum.

They were paying 36% of ad revenue or $20 billion per year to dominate Apple devices. Mozilla Firefox was raking in cash to make Google the default, and a bunch of other companies' financial statements were being nourished by the teats of this illegal cash cow.

Being added to the Monopoly wall of shame was a huge embarrassment for a company that once said "don't be evil," but like Microsoft, Walter White, Macbeth, and Gollum, their greed for power eventually backfired.

But it appears, unlike Microsoft, that Google won't just get a slap on the wrist and possibly lose their most important piece of software, the Chrome web browser. It is November 20th, 2024, and you're watching The Code Report.

It's a bit ironic that the Chrome web browser currently controls 66.6% of the browser market share, and Google Search even dominates on browsers that aren't Chrome, like Safari and Firefox, thanks to those illegal deals I mentioned earlier.

But to Google's credit, they've invested millions upon millions of dollars into making web browsers awesome for end users.

Their open source Chromium project is used by Microsoft's Edge browser, as well as alternative hipster browsers like Brave and Arc.

And all this browser technology is offered for free out of the goodness of Google's heart. Well, as the old saying goes, when software is free, it means that you are the product.

Chrome tracks your search queries, your browsing history, and online behavior.

And all this data feeds back into its advertising business, where it can figure out exactly what type of consumer garbage to sell you and when.

Not only does Google's ad revenue dwarf the competition, but Alphabet operates at a gross profit margin north of 50%, and they make an absolute killing selling their ads to the highest bidder. But the Chrome browser is critical to its success because it's the front door to everything Google offers.

But apparently, Department of Justice lawyers are pushing to have Chrome split off or sold to a different company, with an estimated price tag of at least $20 billion.

The only potential buyers would be companies like Meta, Apple, and Amazon, all of which are accused of running their own monopolies.

If browsers start presenting new search engines as alternatives, like OpenAI's new search engine or DuckDuckGo, Google's 90% dominance of the search engine market will very likely start to deteriorate.

But they're not going down without a fight, and their Regulatory Affairs VP said, "Now, Microsoft also became a certified monopoly 25 years ago when they bundled Internet Explorer with Microsoft Windows and suppressed other browsers like Netscape.

Instead of breaking up the company, though, they just had to open up their APIs to third exclusivity deals that were unfair to other browsers.

They didn't even face a direct financial penalty.

Microsoft is doing just fine today as a $3 trillion company, but if Google loses Chrome, I'm not so sure they have a moat to handle a hit like that." The good news is that it looks like they'll let Google keep Android, and we still don't know how their AI tech is going to play out long term.

Their Gemini AI has become quite impressive and has become so confident that it's now telling humans to die.

But, like I said, Chrome is also the front door to get people using Gemini.

And when you close that front door, it could also hurt consumers because Google will no longer have the motivation to invest in browser technology. Like just imagine the horrors if Chrome was handed off to a non-profit like Apache or the Linux Foundation.

It might evolve into a diverse ecosystem of hyper-specialized browser distros.

And who knows, they might even kill off Manifest version 3, which would allow ad blockers to keep working.

And that means I couldn't use this opportunity right now to promote my new Linux and Deno courses on Fireship.io, which you can get access to as a pro member using this Black Friday discount for 40% off. Personally though, I think Google will fight this to the death, and I highly doubt Google will ever be forced to sell Chrome.

The betting odds are currently at 13% because there's no way that Google gives up its precious.

One browser to rule them all, one browser to find them, one browser to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them. This has been the Code Report.

Thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next one.