Calls for Chrome sale lead to cybersecurity concerns

The motion follows an August antitrust ruling, in which a U.S. judge ruled that Google had violated antitrust law and illegally monopolized the search market, by making $26.3 billion in payments to other companies to make its search engine the default option on smartphones and web browsers.

Internet advertising: a core business

As of now, Google controls about 90% of the online search market. On smartphones, this number is even higher: 95% of users have Chrome as their standard browser. The Chrome browser allows Google to promote its products, such as Gmail for email and Gemini for artificial intelligence.

However, the biggest revenue comes from internet advertising through Chrome, with ad and search businesses. With the browser, Google collects significant amounts of data such as search behaviors and preferred websites, to target ads more efficiently. Google’s ad and search business brought in more than half of Alphabet’s total revenue of $88.3 billion in the latest quarter.

A changing political and digital climate

The ruling is the first major decision in a series of cases taking on alleged monopolies in Big Tech. In the past four years, federal antitrust regulators have also sued Meta, Amazon, and Apple for having illegally maintained monopolies. All cases began under the Trump administration.

However, the case may now encounter resistance from Trump, who indicated last month that he might avoid breaking up the company as it could weaken the American tech industry, particularly at a time when competition with China in sectors like AI is intensifying, Reuters said.

At the same time, legal proceedings could be lengthy, with potential appeals to the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. By the time the proceedings finish, browsers or search engines as we know them now might not even be as relevant as today anymore.

Even if Alphabet is forced to sell Chrome, who would be able to buy it? According to Bloomberg, Chrome would be valued at $15 billion to $20 billion if it was sold or spun off. Considering this value, the only parties able to acquire the browser would be its competitors - which would again bring antitrust matters to the table.

Deteriorating cybersecurity & privacy

However, a larger concern of selling off Chrome is what will happen to the broader web. Through its advertising business, Google has the resources to adopt technological innovations fast. Without Google’s financial support, this progress would slow down, weakening the ecosystem and possibly leading to the deterioration of security and privacy of billions of users and the rise of cybercrime on unimaginable levels, experts worry.

While the legal process takes place, the opportunity for nefarious activity off the back of it will continue, Forbes said. For example, cybercriminals could leverage the uncertainty by creating new phishing campaigns. However, as Google itself also warned, severing Chrome and Android would jeopardize security and make patching security bugs harder. At the moment, features like Chrome’s Safe Browsing, Android’s security features, and Play Protect for the Play Store all use threat information and intelligence signals from a diverse range of Google products.

While we won’t have an answer as to what will happen to Chrome anytime soon, with the pending cases of Meta, Amazon, and Apple, these concerns should be taken seriously - and should be getting a more prominent place in the monopoly discussions.