The Paradox of a Forced Sale of Chrome

I’m Alan Chapell. I’ve been working at the intersection of privacy, competition and advertising for decades and I’m now writing for The Monopoly Report. If you have a tip to share in confidence, ping me at my last name at Gmail or find me on Bluesky.

Our latest Monopoly Report podcast is out with Don Marti - VP of Ecosystem Innovation at Raptive. We talk about the past and future role of the browser in the ads business.

Maybe the DOJ is just bluffing…

When the DOJ made its initial case for divestiture of Chrome a few weeks ago, I half-jokingly started a thread on LinkedIn - asking for hot-takes on potential landing places for Chrome. For the record, I have mixed (and sometimes conflicting) thoughts about Chrome divestment. A brief summary of my thinking:

1. DOJ is mostly posturing as they look to push other remedies

2. The other remedies as currently proposed are unlikely have a meaningful impact on Google’s dominance in the ads space

3. Chrome (and Android) divestment are must-haves if you want to limit Google’s dominance, and

4. The complexities and unintended consequences for such divestment might be better in the long run, but will create all kinds of short to mid-term pain for just about anyone reading this.

So once again, I find myself marveling at Google’s mastery - this time for ensuring that the cure is worse the disease.

Also, after having made fun of a few friends who were pushing the idea just a few weeks ago, I’ve come around to thinking that making browsers part of some public trust might not be such a bad idea after all.

Can just anyone buy Chrome?

The general consensus as indicated by the responses to my post was that the list of potential suiters is small due to: (1) competition concerns – nobody wants the result of a divestiture to be yet another monopoly, and (2) budget concerns – the short-list of who can really afford Chrome is small, and anyone who has the necessary resources will fall under concern #1.

I’d add that there might be a third factor: specifically, longevity. The browser is still king of the desktop space, but if you look at Internet usage trends over time, a question comes to mind: Will the browser still be king in a decade?

Moreover, some were recently predicting an existential threat for mid-tail and long tail publishers. (That Google also might have something to do with that event is a case in point that we are in major need something drastic to stem the tide). If there are fewer places to go, doesn’t that change the tools you need to get there? In that light, and if you take a long-term view, a purchase of Chrome could be seen as being more akin to renting today’s eyeballs than buying tomorrow’s eyeballs.

Reasons why it probably won’t happen

But even if you ignore the competition and long-term viability concerns (yeah, a big ask), there are lots of other challenges, such as:

• Chrome is integrally tied into Google’s other product offerings.

• Chrome is more valuable to Google than it is to anyone else.

• Whomever buys Chrome is taking on a number of high salaries.

SOMEBODY would need to continue to support Chromium - and its unlikely that the acquirer would be nearly as magnanimous as Google has been.

A post-Google Chrome will need to find alternative monetization strategies - many of which will create privacy headaches (if not nightmares).

In capitalist societies, we mostly tend to frown on the notion of a government imposed sale for pennies on the dollar (sorry, TikTok).

Possible landing spots for Chrome

Just for the heck of it (and perhaps to stir the pot a bit), I’ll try my best to put those issues to the side and take a look at some possible divestiture scenarios:

• The Trade Desk - This seems to be everyone’s favorite future home for Chrome. TTD could scrap the Sandbox and perhaps even UID 2.0 in favor of a newly minted Chrome advertising ID and use it to save ad monetization for the “open Internet”. This might be viewed as a short-term win for publishers. But over time, I have to wonder if they’d simply be trading one exploitative super-partner for another.

• Premium Publishers – If you think the TTD idea has any legs, I’ve got an even better one. What if publishers created a consortium to purchase Chrome? That certainly helps with some of the distribution challenges faced by the publishing industry - and could be a first step towards a new ad model for pubs. Can there be such a thing as a publisher-only browser? And perhaps the biggest unknown - can publishers afford it? Well, there are a number of new laws, rulings and court filings around the world that are designed to compel search engines, AI companies and social networks to pay for publisher content (and arguably, to pay for prior sins). If Google needs to get rid of Chrome anyway, perhaps this landing spot helps Google untangle itself from some additional liabilities.

• Telcos / ISPs - You may be thinking – really? Seems like the LAST thing that an ISP or Telco should do is to make yet another adtech play – only to sell it as a write off a few years later. But hear me out. What if Utiq or a similar telco consortium buys Chrome? Utiq is already building an advertising UID and are seemingly able to defy gravity by navigating EU consent rules. The top inhibitor to their success (outside of the bureaucracy of their respective parent companies) is going to be the browsers taking shots at that UID. Maybe owning a major browser helps.

• Private Equity - If you buy into the notion that the browser’s role will decline by the time the aliens come to take over the world in 10-15 years, then private equity might be the most sensible suitor for Chrome. PE will surely figure out how to monetize. But if you care at all about privacy, this will probably strike you as a horrible idea. Whatever they come up with will in all likelihood be vastly more intrusive than that Mozilla analytics play advocates were complaining about a few months ago. And just to complete the thought, I’m not sure it gets much better for other scenario’s where Google is operating as a standalone.

• Walled Gardens, Walmart or Amazon - As I’ve learned in both yoga and therapy: wanting something and needing it are not the same thing. The long-term value of a browser to big retail or walled gardens might be relatively limited. Sure, any of them would want the additional distribution - but growth of mobile and video consumption, AI agents and progressive web apps are the future. Also, seems to me that if Amazon wanted marketshare for their browser, they’d provide an incentive for Prime users to use it. #WhoNeedsChrome?

• Open AI & Perplexity - Leaving aside that both will likely be blocked by Elon from doing much of anything over the next few years, I think they’d each benefit more than the walled gardens from the initial shot in the arm Chrome would provide. They certainly want access to the content - and they have plenty of money over there. If you want to quickly move to the end game as between privacy, fair use, content droughts, and Ourobous model collapse - this is the quickest path forward.

• And the rest - Apologies for the Gilligan’s Island reference, but there are lots of big companies (e.g., Citi, Disney) out there who could do interesting things with a browser. I’m skeptical that any of them would be able to generate the required ROI without creating their own privacy and/or regulatory quagmire.

More below the jump…

OK. I lied. I don’t have much else to add. If you have any ideas (other than say…. sell Chrome to “Truth Browser” or “the NY Jets”), feel free to share them in the comments.

Alan’s Hot Takes…

Here are a few additional stories that hit me over the past week:

• FTC settles with Mobilewalla, and Gravy Analytics / Venntel - This proposed settlement order against Mobilewalla, and the one for Gravy Analytics and its subsidiary Venntel mostly pertain to precise location data. Lot’s to unpack (particularly the law enforcement connection to data broker industry.) Two things that really strike me: (1) FTC imposed a prohibition on Mobilewalla from obtaining data collected via RTB auctions MW didn’t win, and (2) the FTC’s assertion that RTB data is sensitive (something the FTC has said before, but those words don’t necessarily make their way into the ears of the business community.) The FTC order says that Mobilewalla “must not collect, purchase, or otherwise acquire or retain Covered Information that Respondent accesses while participating in online advertising auctions for any other purpose than participating in such auctions.” That’s a VERY broad restriction. And while the FTC order as it pertains to RTB data only apply to MW, just you wait until the above snippet gets pasted into a privacy law somewhere. More info here.

• U.S. Consumers support a national privacy law – Consumer Reports recently published a survey of 2,146 U.S. adults and found that 78 percent would support a law regulating how companies can collect, store, share, and use our personal data. This survey will have absolutely no impact on the chances of a federal privacy law - but is still interesting (at least to THIS privacy nerd).

• UK CMA finds competition issues in mobile browser market - The UK Competition and Markets Authority published a report finding “a number of features in the markets for mobile browsers, browser engines and in-app browsing technology which restrict competition.” I’m particularly interested in the idea that Apple’s privacy and security policies are restricting the use of progressive web apps - tools which could impact the control Apple and Google have over their app stores. I have my issues with the CMA’s handling of the Privacy Sandbox, but their pointing to the impact of Apple’s privacy/security stance on innovation could at least raise awareness. Just a few years ago, Apple’s policies and practices seemed unassailable. Today, regulators are at least talking about their impact on innovation.

• IAB TL guidance on ID-less tracking - In November of 2024, the IAB Techlab published guidance on ID-less targeting solutions for digital advertising. Overall, I applaud the effort, but I don’t love the broad exemption of first-party identifiers - for one thing, that invites companies to crowbar their ID into that definition. Also, we need a more granular rating system for ID-less ad targeting mechanisms.

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