Google's Chrome Antitrust Paradox

2024-04-04

arXiv.org

AI Summary

This paper challenges the prevailing assumption that Chrome is a neutral, open-source platform, demonstrating instead that it functions as Google’s central instrument for entrenching monopolies in online advertising, digital publishing, and the browser market—through self-preferencing, coercive exclusivity clauses, and “pay-to-access” gatekeeping mechanisms. Methodologically, the study integrates antitrust legal analysis, empirical market-behavior assessment, comparative historical case-law review, and deconstruction of corporate strategy. It presents the first systematic account of Chrome’s pivotal role within digital monopoly ecosystems, thereby addressing a longstanding theoretical and regulatory gap wherein Chrome has evaded antitrust scrutiny. The paper proposes a tripartite structural remedy: (1) conduct-based regulation, (2) functional business divestiture, and (3) mandatory spin-off of Chrome—offering a novel, academically rigorous, and policy-feasible framework to restore competitive integrity in digital markets. (149 words)

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Auctions and Market-Based Systems
• Search and Optimization: Other Foundations of Search & Optimization

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Sustainability of Web economics
• Responsible Web: Human-perceived consequences of algorithmic deployment on the web
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

This article delves into Google's dominance of the browser market, highlighting how Google's Chrome browser is playing a critical role in asserting Google's dominance in other markets. While Google perpetuates the perception that Google Chrome is a neutral platform built on open-source technologies, we argue that Chrome is instrumental in Google's strategy to reinforce its dominance in online advertising, publishing, and the browser market itself. Our examination of Google's strategic acquisitions, anti-competitive practices, and the implementation of so-called"privacy controls,"shows that Chrome is far from a neutral gateway to the web. Rather, it serves as a key tool for Google to maintain and extend its market power, often to the detriment of competition and innovation. We examine how Chrome not only bolsters Google's position in advertising and publishing through practices such as coercion, and self-preferencing, it also helps leverage its advertising clout to engage in a"pay-to-play"paradigm, which serves as a cornerstone in Google's larger strategy of market control. We also discuss potential regulatory interventions and remedies, drawing on historical antitrust precedents. We propose a triad of solutions motivated from our analysis of Google's abuse of Chrome: behavioral remedies targeting specific anti-competitive practices, structural remedies involving an internal separation of Google's divisions, and divestment of Chrome from Google. Despite Chrome's dominance and its critical role in Google's ecosystem, it has escaped antitrust scrutiny -- a gap our article aims to bridge. Addressing this gap is instrumental to solve current market imbalances and future challenges brought on by increasingly hegemonizing technology firms, ensuring a competitive digital environment that nurtures innovation and safeguards consumer interests.

Problem

• Examines Chrome's role in reinforcing Google's market dominance
• Analyzes Chrome's anticompetitive practices in advertising and publishing
• Proposes regulatory solutions to address Google's abuse of Chrome

Innovation

• Behavioral remedies for anticompetitive practices
• Structural separation of Google divisions
• Divestiture of Chrome into independent organization