DuckDuckGo chief executive Gabriel Weinberg has informed Judge Amit Mehta that Google Chrome could ask “upwards of $50 billion” if regulators force Alphabet Inc. to divest the product from its search empire.
Federal antitrust hearings took an unexpected turn Wednesday when a chief rival put a hefty price on the Google browser. Weinberg highlighted the figure during the Justice Department’s three-week remedies hearing in Washington. Calling his number “back-of-the-envelope” math based on Chrome’s user base. He also added that it is out of DuckDuckGo’s price range.
However, there has been an argument between the government and a coalition of states that selling Chrome is the surest way to eliminate Google’s illegal grip on online search, a monopoly Mehta found last year. The $50 billion estimate tops the roughly $20 billion valuation put forward in November by Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mandeep Singh. Weinberg acknowledged that a tag that large could scare off buyers if the court orders a divestiture. Google has not offered Chrome for sale and plans to appeal the ruling.
Different parties predicted to show interest in buying Google Chrome
According to earlier reports, executives from artificial intelligence firms OpenAI and Perplexity testified that their companies would explore a bid should Chrome be put on the market. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, already uses Microsoft’s Bing to get search results inside its chatbot. Prosecutors note that Google’s dominance in search also gives it an advantage in artificial intelligence, allowing the company to steer users back to its core advertising business.
In opening remarks on Monday, Justice Department lawyers said newer AI features, including Google’s own Gemini products, could become yet another “on-ramp” to the company’s search engine. Government witness Aaron Turley said Google declined OpenAI’s request to license its search application programming interface last summer.
According to an email shown in court, OpenAI first approached Google in July and received a rejection in August, after Google said the deal would “involve too many competitors.” OpenAI told Google that access to the API would help it “provide a better product to users.” Judge Mehta is considering several possible solutions, from product changes to an outright sale of the browser. His decision, expected later this year, will determine whether one of the most popular gateways to the internet remains under Google or will belong to a new owner.