Smaller Browsers Poised for Growth as DOJ Demands Google Sell Chrome

Regulators in the US are forcing Google to sell Chrome, its web browser, because with Chrome Google can have a lot of power over the internet and online advertising market. The Department of Justice is playing a bigger role in this because they want to break Google’s dominating role over the internet. The US government says that they want to make online advertising fair for everyone and Google is not letting that happen. As Chrome is the world's biggest browsing platform, which mean the search giant has more control on how and where its ads appear when users search for anything on the web. Google is even the default search engine on iPhone too, which is too disadvantageous to many online advertisers and competitors.

According to Appfigures estimates, Chrome has the highest number of market shares in terms of downloads on mobile. Google Chrome had 35% of the total downloads of the top five browsers in 2024. Other browsers like Edge, Opera, Brave and Firefox do not come anywhere close to Chrome in terms of market shares and downloads. Till now in 2024, Chrome had approximately 70 million downloads and by the end of 2024, it can reach 80 million. This is almost twice of the downloads of Edge.

On the other hand, Edge and Opera had 40 million downloads in 2024 and it is clear that these two can earn the biggest advantage if Chrome gets out of the picture. As of October 2024, Chrome’s downloads were down by 14%, probably because of DOJ scrutiny on the tech giant. Chrome has no value if it is not owned by Google, so it has no reason for growth if Google decides to sell it. But other web browsers can probably benefit from this.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World