The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and several state governments have formally filed a cross-appeal notice, emphasizing their dissatisfaction with the court's previous rulings against Google.The ruling of "no forced splitting"This has once again pushed the court to order Google to sell its Chrome browser business.
The judge had previously criticized it as "overly broad," and the U.S. Department of Justice is now revisiting the issue.
Looking back at the ruling in the fall of 2025, while Judge Amit Mehta found that Google constituted an illegal monopoly in the search engine market, he rejected the U.S. Department of Justice's request for Google to divest its Chrome browser business as a remedy.
The judge stated in the ruling that the plaintiff (the U.S. Department of Justice) was requesting the mandatory divestiture of these key assets."Overexpansion" The court found that Google had not directly used the Chrome browser to impose illegal restrictions. Ultimately, the court only imposed other restrictions, such as terminating Google's exclusive search default agreements with companies like Apple, and requiring Google to share some search data with competitors.
However, the U.S. Department of Justice believes these measures are insufficient to restore market competition. According to a Bloomberg News report, some state attorneys general have also joined the appeal, strongly supporting the call to break up Google's business.
Both sides complained that one felt the punishment was too lenient, while the other felt it was too severe.
The current situation has resulted in a fierce two-way tug-of-war.
On the one hand, the U.S. Department of Justice believes the judge was lenient and insists on breaking up Google's competitive advantage by splitting up the Chrome browser business; on the other hand, Google has already appealed the ruling.
Google's position is naturally to hope to overturn the antitrust determination, or at least to seek a lighter penalty than the current judgment, rather than the heavy penalty sought by the Department of Justice.
Analysis of viewpoints
The U.S. Department of Justice is relentlessly pursuing the Chrome browser business because browsers are the absolute "gateway" to search engines. As long as Google continues to hold the world's largest browser market share, even if its exclusive deal with Apple is prohibited, Google can still drive a large amount of traffic to its own search engine through Chrome.
Therefore, for regulators, it is difficult to completely break the monopoly structure without severing this connection.
However, from a legal practice perspective, the judge's previous ruling is also logically sound: punishment must correspond to illegal conduct. If Google's illegal conduct mainly involved "signing exclusive contracts," then the punishment should target the contracts, rather than directly confiscating its browser products.
Both sides have appealed, meaning the case will likely drag on for another year or two. For the average user, Chrome browser usage won't be affected in the short term. However, it's foreseeable that dealing with these lawsuits will make Google more constrained when integrating its own services (such as promoting Gemini or other AI features within Chrome).
