U.S. Justice Department proposes sale of Google’s Chrome to curb monopoly

The Justice Department and a group of states have proposed a raft of changes to the business practices of Alphabet’s Google — including a forced sale of the company’s Chrome web browser — in the wake of a landmark ruling that the technology giant illegally monopolized online search.

In a court filing Wednesday, antitrust enforcers said Google must divest Chrome, citing the judge’s earlier ruling that the browser “fortified [Google’s] dominance.”

The agency and states said that they would also prefer a divestiture of the Android smartphone operating system, but that recognizing Google and others might oppose that, they would instead propose a series of limits on the business unit.