Google's Chrome Antitrust Paradox

Abstract

This article examines Google’s dominance of the browser market, highlighting how Google’s Chrome (“Chrome”) browser is playing a critical role in asserting Google’s dominance in other markets. While Google perpetuates the perception that Chrome is a neutral platform built on open-source technologies, this Article argues that Chrome is instrumental in Google’s strategy to reinforce its dominance in online advertising, publishing, and the browser market. This examination of Google’s strategic acquisitions, anti-competitive practices, and the implementation of so-called “privacy controls,” shows that Chrome is far from a neutral gateway to the web. Rather, it serves as a key tool for Google to maintain and extend its market power, often to the detriment of competition and innovation.

This Article illustrates how Chrome not only bolsters Google’s position in advertising and publishing through practices such as coercion and self-preferencing, but also helps leverage its advertising clout to engage in a “pay-to-play” paradigm—the cornerstone in Google’s larger strategy of market control. This Article also outlines potential regulatory interventions and remedies by drawing on historical antitrust precedents. This Article proposes a triad of solutions motivated from an analysis of Google’s abuse of Chrome, including behavioral remedies targeting specific anti-competitive practices, structural remedies involving an internal separation of Google’s divisions, and divestment of Chrome from Google.

Despite Chrome’s dominance and its critical role in Google’s ecosystem, it has escaped antitrust scrutiny—a gap this Article aims to bridge. Addressing this gap is instrumental to solving current market imbalances and future challenges brought on by increasingly hegemonizing technology firms, ensuring a competitive digital environment that nurtures innovation and safeguards consumer interests.

Keywords: Antitrust, Chrome, Google, Privacy