Is the Biden Administration Coming for Chrome?

A parting antitrust shot by Biden’s enforcers

Before the Biden administration’s antitrust leaders step down, they’re taking their final shots at Big Tech. That will reportedly include an effort to break up Google as a consequence of the Justice Department’s successful competition lawsuit against the company.

A forthcoming request to force the sale of the Chrome browser, according to Bloomberg, would be one of the most sweeping competition demands in years. But it will also be a test of the second Trump administration’s own antitrust agenda.

Chrome is a crucial part of Google’s business. The industry’s dominant web browser — it controls about 61 percent of the U.S. market, according to Bloomberg — is a potent data-collection portal, steering people to the company’s search engine. That gives Google the ability to track users when they are signed in, and can be used to for targeted ads.

Chrome has also become a gateway for Google’s A.I. services, including its Gemini chatbot, which some say could eventually follow user activity across the web.

The Justice Department decided against requesting the divestiture of Google’s Android smartphone operating system, Bloomberg reports. But it wants the company to stop bundling it with services including search and the Google Play app store.

If successful, the split would cement a crucial legacy for Biden’s antitrust team. It’s unclear how much of the aggressive approach promoted by Lina Khan of the F.T.C. and Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department will survive. A Chrome divestiture would achieve the kind of corporate breakup that regulators failed to force upon Microsoft two decades ago.