DOJ to ask judge to force Google to sell off Chrome, Bloomberg News reports

By then, browsers or search engines as we know them today might already be obsolete,

he said

The DMA has yet to achieve its full potential, the search market in the EU has seen little movement, and we believe launching formal investigations is the only way to force Google into compliance,

Kamyl Bazbaz, DuckDuckGo's vice-president for communications, wrote in a blogpost

Google is trying to avoid its legal obligation in the name of privacy, which is ironic coming from the Internet’s biggest tracker,

its blog post added

Before the DMA came into effect, it took more than 15 steps to switch your default search engine on Android, and today that is still the case,

Bazbaz wrote

We have raised these issues with the Commission before privately and they indicated they are taking them seriously and looking into them,

Bazbaz also told TechCrunch

To comply with both the letter and the spirit of the DMA, we have consulted extensively with industry, experts, and the European Commission and made significant changes to our products,

said Emily Clarke, a Google spokesperson

This method is conveniently overbroad,

DuckDuckGo wrote, suggesting

Google has completely ignored its easy switching obligations under the DMA,

he argued

So few users actually see it, and it’s not a permeant setting that facilities easy switching, ... Compare that to the search engine choice screen rolled out on Chrome to their entire EEA [European Economic Area] user-base and we saw a 75% increase in search queries coming through Chrome.”

he explained, adding

These corporate behemoths are not merely exercising market power; they are abusing dominant positions,

he said

The government putting its thumb on a scale in these ways would harm consumers, developers, and American technological leadership at precisely the moment it is most needed,

she added

Amit Mehtajudge

Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,

Mehta wrote in his August opinion

My view is this is extremely unlikely,

Mandeep Singh, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, said in an email

In recent years, the government has been trying to countervail the high pricing power of dominant tech companies,

Peter Cohan, an associate professor of management practice at Babson College, previously told Business Insider

The DOJ continues to push a radical agenda that goes far beyond the legal issues in this case,

Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president of Google's regulatory affairs, told Business Insider in a statement