Google exec says splitting Chrome from its other services is impossible

Google’s general manager for Chrome, Parisa Tabriz, testified on Friday that the browser’s development over 17 years is so deeply entwined with other parts of Alphabet Inc. that separating it would be “unprecedented.” Tabriz told Judge Amit Mehta during the Justice Department’s antitrust trial that several key features, such as Safe Browsing and the compromised-password notification system ,rely on shared Google infrastructure beyond Chrome’s direct control. “I don’t think it could be recreated,” she said, adding that disentangling Chrome from Alphabet would be without precedent.

The hearing is part of a three-week proceeding to determine what remedies are necessary after Judge Mehta’s ruling last year that Google illegally monopolised the search market. The Justice Department is seeking an order requiring Google to divest Chrome and to share certain search-result data, as well as a ban on paying for default placements on devices and browsers, restrictions that would extend to its AI products, including Gemini.

Earlier in the day, government witness James Mickens, a computer-science professor at Harvard University, testified that divesting Chrome would be technically feasible. “The divestiture of Chrome is feasible from a technical perspective,” Mickens said, noting that Google could transfer ownership without significantly disrupting functionality. He also argued that Google would continue contributing to the open-source Chromium Project, which underlies Chrome and rivals such as Microsoft Edge and Brave, because Android and other Google products depend on its code. “Google has a motivation to make sure the source code is well-maintained,” Mickens said.

Tabriz challenged that view, noting that Google has provided more than 90% of Chromium’s code contributions since 2015 and invests “hundreds of millions of dollars” annually through some 1,000 engineers. “Other companies are not contributing now in any meaningful way,” she told the court.

Tabriz also described ongoing efforts to integrate artificial intelligence into Chrome. She noted that users can already add extensions such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Perplexity AI, and that Google’s own Gemini assistant is set as the default. “Most browsers are experimenting with AI and launching features,” she said, citing Microsoft’s integration of Copilot in Bing and Edge. In a 2024 internal email, she wrote, “We envision a future of multiple agents, where Chrome integrates deeply with Gemini as a primary agent and one we’ll prioritise and enable users to engage with multiple third-party agents on the web in both consumer and enterprise settings.”

Google Chrome remains the world’s most widely used browser, with an estimated 66% market share as of March, according to Statcounter.

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