Google may be compelled to divest its Chrome internet browser after a federal judge ruled that the company holds an “illegal monopoly” over online search.
Big Moves: DOJ Wants Google Sold?
According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Department of Justice is gearing up to ask Judge Amit P. Mehta to order Alphabet to part ways with its flagship browser, Chrome. If the judge takes the deal, it could be the biggest antitrust smackdown the U.S. ever unleashes on a tech giant.
Mehta’s Earlier Verdict
Back in August, the judge ruled that Google, which dominates roughly 90% of worldwide searches, used its power to choke out rivals. A trial to dig into potential fixes is slated for next April.
Why Chrome Matters
It’s the gateway to the internet for millions of users.
Chrome is hardwired to Google Search by default.
It tracks user behaviour, letting Google hand out laser‑targeted ads—one of its biggest cash cows.
News of a forced sale sent Alphabet’s shares tumbling a little over a dollar on the New York market.
Antitrust Conditions on the Table
The DOJ is also thinking about giving websites more options, preventing Google from stuffing its AI ingredients into their content.
Right now, Google’s search results often start with AI‑powered “overviews.” The DOJ may force Google to license its data or hand over its search results for the benefit of competitors.
Responses
The DOJ stayed tight‑lipped. Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice‑president of Regulatory Affairs, blasted the move as a “radical agenda that goes far beyond legal concerns” and warned it would hurt consumer choice.
What’s Next for Google?
Google plans to appeal once Judge Mehta delivers his final decision, expected sometime in August 2025. Other possible cuts could remove exclusive deals—like the billions Google pays Apple to keep its search engine as the default on iOS devices—and even force a sale of Android.
The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 8 to permit it to withhold billions of dollars in foreign aid previously authorized by Congress.
The Authority of Law statue at the Supreme Court in Washington on Aug. 8, 2025. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times
The Department of Justice (DOJ) asked the justices to pause a ruling by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, who ordered the federal government to spend about $4 billion in previously appropriated funds.
The money is earmarked for foreign aid and United Nations peacekeeping projects.
The emergency application was filed in two cases, Trump v. Global Health Council, and U.S. Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalitions.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the new application that this is the third time in this case that Ali “has issued an unlawful injunction that precipitates an unnecessary emergency and needless interbranch conflict.”
In February, Ali gave the federal government 36 hours to pay roughly $2 billion in invoices for past foreign-aid work, which Sauer called “an impossible task,” and one that the judge lacked authority to order. The Supreme Court ended the dispute by granting an administrative stay, a court order that gives the justices more time to consider a matter.
After the deadline was lifted, the government paid “virtually all of the contested amounts,” Sauer said.
Next, Ali issued a “novel injunction requiring the government to obligate tens of billions of dollars in foreign-aid appropriations on the theory that failing to do so constituted an unlawful impoundment in violation of the Constitution and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974,” Sauer said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit lifted that injunction and that court allowed its ruling to come into effect on Aug. 28, Sauer said.
Now that its original theory has been “decisively rejected,” the district court precipitated a new emergency “by issuing a version of the same injunction near midnight on September 3,” Sauer stated.
Again, the district court is forcing the government to obligate about $10.5 billion in foreign-aid funding that was due to expire on Sept. 30, according to Sauer. But now the government has been left “with even less time for further review or compliance, with even more deficient legal theories,” Sauer said.
Sauer said the government already intended to obligate $6.5 billion of that funding by Sept. 30, but Ali’s order regarding the remaining $4 billion “raises a grave and urgent threat to the separation of powers,” a constitutional doctrine that divides the government into three branches to prevent any single branch from accumulating too much power.
After the D.C. Circuit canceled Ali’s injunction, the president proposed rescinding that $4 billion in funding under the Impoundment Control Act. Under fast-track procedures, Congress has 45 days to consider the rescission request and during that period the president cannot be required to spend the money, Sauer said.
Ali’s new injunction would compel the Executive Branch to begin “obligating those funds at breakneck speed to meet the September 30 deadline, even as Congress is considering the rescission proposal” and before Congress’s 45 days to do so elapse, Sauer said. A panel of the D.C. Circuit denied by a vote of 2–1 a stay of the judge’s order late on Sept. 5, Sauer added.
Also on Sept. 8, Global Health Council and other litigants that want the $4 billion to be released filed a brief opposing the government’s application for an administrative stay of Ali’s order.
“The government’s theory that the agencies need not comply with enacted legislation mandating that they spend funds, because the President has unilaterally proposed legislation to rescind those statutory mandates, would fundamentally upend our constitutional structure,” the brief reads.
It is unclear when the Supreme Court will act on the government’s application.
