Alissa Cooper is the Executive Director of the Knight-Georgetown Institute (KGI). The below analysis is based on her independent research and does not necessarily reflect the views of KGI. This post is part of a pair on this subject published in tandem—read the other one here.

In August 2024, a United States district court judge found that Google had illegally monopolized the market for online search. The case has since moved to the remedies phase. Late last year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and state Attorneys General put forward a comprehensive remedy proposal. The proposed remedies include the divestiture of Google Chrome and a prohibition on Google entering into revenue-sharing agreements with rival browsers. Subsequently, some commentators have raised concerns that the combination of these remedies will drain the funding that currently sustains the web’s evolution. The concerns about the Chrome divestiture, in particular, represent a distorted view of the business interests that drive the web and a failure to imagine how vibrant the web could be when freed from the dominant influence of a search monopolist.

Later this year, the court in the Google search case will decide on remedies. Regardless of whether the judge’s order includes a Chrome divestiture, it is crucial for the public to understand that the web’s growth and innovation need not depend on Google’s monopoly or Google’s control of the web.

This piece makes three contributions to the discourse about the divestiture remedy:

• Part I provides a primer on the fundamentals of web browser technology and the current browser market to help situate further analysis of a potential divestiture,
• Part II sketches revenue and cost estimates for browsers in the market today, and
• Part III proposes a set of public interest conditions to be imposed on the acquiring entity in the event of a divestiture.

Related concerns have been raised about the plaintiffs’ proposal to ban all revenue-sharing payments between Google and independent browsers, which would imperil Mozilla’s current key revenue source, among other things. This piece does not address these concerns directly, although the discussion of revenue and cost estimates in Part II may be helpful for assessing the magnitude of these concerns. Existing proposals that would allow for partial revenue sharing are also relevant to this analysis.

I. Primer: Web Technology and History

Browsers, browser engines, and the web platform

Browsers are highly complex pieces of software, akin in their level of complexity to an operating system, but for the web. Browsers typically have two components:

• a browser engine, the core software component inside the browser. The browser engine transforms web source code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) into web pages or web applications (web apps) that users see and interact with.
• a branded user interface (UI), which is responsible for user-facing functionality. The browser UI gives the browser its look and feel, layout, navigation bar, and settings. The default search engine is set as part of the browser UI.

The browser engine is like a car's engine, providing the real power under the hood, while the UI provides the bells and whistles that drivers (web users) can see and touch. In the browser industry, the browser UI was often referred to as the browser chrome, like the flashy exterior finishings on a car, before Google used the term to name its browser. The bulk of a browser’s code resides in the browser engine, which is responsible for key functionality that consumers use to navigate the internet: HTML rendering, networking, encryption of traffic, management of cookies, real-time audio and video processing, and much more. Most of the cost of creating a browser comes from building and maintaining the browser engine. The two components can be used independently, similar to how one can swap out a car’s engine, which is what allows some browser companies to build their UI on top of open-source browser engines.

Modern browser companies often also support a suite of services that integrate with the browser. These might include syncing of browsing history between devices, identity services, browser extension marketplaces, security services to protect against malicious websites (Safe Browsing), advertising services, or others.

Beyond individual browsers and websites, the broader web ecosystem relies on a set of shared standards and protocols designed to ensure interoperability. The “web platform” can be understood as the set of industry standards, protocols, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that define how websites and web apps work. Organizations like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) define these standardized protocols and APIs. Browser engines implement these standards and, in some cases, share software libraries or other code, enabling websites and web apps to work consistently across browsers.

Players in the market

The browser market is shaped by a small number of key players, each with distinct yet interrelated roles, technologies, and strategies that influence the broader web ecosystem. This section explains the approaches of these major players and their impact on the web landscape.

Google

Google develops and maintains the Chrome browser. Google originally launched Chrome in 2008, and at that time, it was based on Safari’s browser engine, WebKit. Google forked WebKit in 2013 to create its own browser engine, Blink, which powers Chrome today.

Google develops and maintains the Chromium open-source project, which includes most but not all of the Chrome code, including Blink. Google leads the development of Chromium and Blink, but others also contribute, including Microsoft, Intel, and Samsung. Chromium serves as the basis for many other browsers, including Edge, Brave, Opera, DuckDuckGo, Arc, and others.

Chrome makes use of technologies developed by other browser vendors, including the WebAssembly format used for high-performance applications and the Rust programming language, both of which were developed at Mozilla.

Apple

Apple develops and maintains the Safari browser, using its own browser engine, WebKit. WebKit is open source. Apple is the main contributor to WebKit.

Apple prohibits the use of any browser engine other than WebKit on iOS devices in the US. As a result, other browser vendors have developed WebKit-based versions of their browsers just for iOS, including Chrome and Firefox. There is not otherwise an ecosystem of WebKit-based browsers for mobile or desktop. In contrast to Safari, Chromium makes significantly more of its browser code available as open source, which simplifies the process for third-party developers to build a new browser based on its codebase.

Mozilla

Mozilla develops Firefox and its browser engine, Gecko, which are open source. The Tor browser is based on Firefox, with Gecko as the underlying browser engine. Because Mozilla maintains its own engine, its costs are far higher than other small independent browser companies that use Chromium and Blink.

Firefox and Gecko incorporate code that was originally developed for Chromium by Google engineers, including graphics libraries and rendering engines, real-time audio and video code, and safety and security technologies.

Microsoft

Microsoft develops and maintains Edge. Microsoft previously developed its own browser engine (first Trident, then EdgeHTML), but in 2019, it made a momentous decision to switch to using Blink/Chromium as the basis for Edge and stopped supporting its own browser engine. Edge was suffering from compatibility problems across different operating systems (even across different versions of Windows), and Microsoft viewed the move to Chromium as a way to overcome them. Importantly, this decision by Microsoft has consolidated the monoculture of web technologies, with Chromium-based browsers making up roughly 80% of the desktop browser market in the US.

Open web vs. the app economy

The web was the first software paradigm that combined portability based on a common programming language, the ability to securely download code from the internet, and a universal addressing system (URLs) that allowed resources (websites and their constituent parts like images) to be retrieved from any endpoint and by any endpoint. Prior to the popularization of the web in the 1990s, most consumer software was platform-specific. The software available to any given user depended on which operating system was running on the user’s computer. As more users got connected to the internet and the web became more ubiquitous throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the web became a way to securely deliver the same functionality and experiences to users across platforms, regardless of which operating system they were using. The open web emerged as a decentralized, universally accessible platform built on open standards like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

The advent of the iPhone in 2007 followed shortly thereafter with the Apple App Store, Android, and the Google Play Store opened a new chapter in the web and mobile technology landscape.

iOS and Android offered curated ecosystems where developers could distribute apps tailored to the hardware and software capabilities of each mobile device. Platform-specific mobile apps could leverage device-specific features like GPS, cameras, and hardware acceleration, provide polished user interfaces, and be monetized through built-in payment and subscription mechanisms. But they required developers to create separate apps for each platform and made developers beholden to Apple and Google’s choices about which device functionality, APIs, and software development kits (SDKs) would be made available. Apple exerted particularly tight control over its app ecosystem and pioneered the lucrative 30% app store commission model.

Apple has been criticized for limiting its support for features that would enrich the web as a platform. It has lagged behind other major browsers, often by several years, in implementing advanced APIs in WebKit, or has implemented them in a less full-featured way—examples include core web app functions (Service Workers and Web App Manifest), push notifications, offline storage, home screen support, voice control, and extended reality (XR/AR/VR) support. Critics claim Apple does this to preserve its control and monetization over mobile apps via the Apple App Store, keeping users locked into its closed ecosystem and devices.

Conversely, Google has invested in the development of APIs designed to narrow the gap between web and native apps, often bringing new web functionality and APIs to market first as contributions to Chromium and through the development of open standards. It has integrated this functionality into the Android ecosystem and promoted these APIs on its platform. Google has also exploited its first-to-market approach to the detriment of its competitors, who face a choice between following along with Google’s development priorities – whether those priorities benefit the “open web” or not – or risking incompatibility with the market leader. For its part, Mozilla views the web and native apps as serving somewhat different use cases, expresses skepticism of the need to close every gap between them, and views Google’s approach at least partly as an effort to disadvantage rival browsers.

The posture difference between Apple and Google, to some extent, likely reflects the differences between Apple’s and Google’s businesses. Google earns most of its revenue from advertising on the web, with a small fraction coming from Android app monetization. Google is incentivized to maintain the web as a functional and performant platform to benefit the ecosystem of third-party web content and services that it monetizes through advertising. Its own web properties and apps (YouTube, Workspace, etc.) also benefit from the web remaining performant.

Lessons for remedy analysis

In sum, browser engines are important, complex, expensive pieces of software. There are three primary ones in use today: Mozilla’s Gecko with a limited user base, Apple’s WebKit with more limited features on a more closed platform, and Chromium. Chromium powers Google’s Chrome, Microsoft’s Edge, and many smaller browsers. Google has a stronger interest in and track record of investing in the web platform compared to Apple.

For better or for worse, this leaves Chromium in an important position with respect to the web platform, motivating concerns about the divestiture of Chrome and the disposition of Chromium. The current dependence on Chromium and Google’s corresponding web investments reflects, to some extent, the market dynamics resulting from Google’s search monopoly. As it was able to exclude rival search providers from the market and realize monopoly profits, so too has it been able to use those profits and resulting investment to dominate web development. But how much does it really cost for a company to maintain a successful browser and invest in the web platform? And can a browser be profitable and maintain that level of investment without dependence on a search monopoly? These questions are addressed in the next section.

II. Current Browser Business Models, Revenue, and Costs

It is difficult to determine precisely the potential revenue from and costs of maintaining a browser; all of the most popular browsers are offered as free software, and none of the major browser vendors report revenue specifically attributable to their browsers. However, the financial details disclosed as part of US v. Google, together with public financial data from Mozilla, provide enough information to make a rough approximation of the revenue associated with each browser today.

Current browser business models and revenue

Chrome

Chrome is a tool that Google uses to earn and increase revenue for all of its web-based businesses. A large fraction of Google search queries come from Chrome. According to expert analysis conducted during the trial, 20% of total US search queries come through user-downloaded Chrome across all OS platforms. Another 19.4% of queries come through mobile search access points covered by Android MADAs/RSAs, according to the US v Google opinion. This second category includes other mobile access points besides Chrome, including the Google search widget and search app. A large majority likely come from Chrome rather than those access points. This means that the percentage of total US search volume generated by Chrome is likely more than 20% and less than 39.4%.

Industry estimates of the total size of the US search advertising market for 2023 (the last full year prior to the analysis conducted at trial) pegged it at approximately $89B. Assuming a linear distribution of ad revenue per query (for the purposes of simplifying the analysis) yields an estimate of between $17B and $35B in US search ad revenue derived per year through Chrome, with the actual number likely falling on the high end of this range. This does not account for search ad revenue outside the US, which is sizable (Google’s total 2023 global revenue from search and related properties was over $175B). These are very rough estimates, but they at least provide a sense of the scale of search ad revenue enabled by the browser.

These estimates also do not include other indirect revenue benefits Google derives through the use of Chrome to enable other parts of its business: usage of browsing history collected via Chrome Sign-In and Sync to enrich ad targeting for YouTube ads (a $31.5B business in 2023), display ads (a $31.3B business in 2023), and search ads; usage of Sign-In to draw users into Google ecosystem products (Gmail, Maps, Workspace, Meet, AI products, mobile and smart home devices, etc.) and increased revenue of those products; and leverage over the direction of web technology development to benefit its own businesses.

Safari and Edge

Apple and Microsoft are motivated to maintain their own browsers because a browser is table stakes for any operating system vendor – users expect desktop and mobile devices to ship with a browser, and the OS vendors would rather their own browsers be preinstalled as defaults than those of a competitor. Both companies have integrated aspects of their own browser code into their operating systems, and they make it difficult or impossible to uninstall their proprietary browsers that come preinstalled on most macOS, iOS, and Windows devices in the US.

Safari and Edge also drive search revenue, similar to Chrome. Apple received a $20B revenue share payment from Google in 2022 and 80% of Apple searches come through Safari, according to the US v Google opinion. Assuming for simplicity’s sake that about 80% of the revenue share payment can be attributed to Safari queries, $16B would be a high estimate for how much Apple realizes in annual search revenue from Safari. Apple also uses Safari to drive traffic to its own web properties (e.g., Apple Maps).

Bing had $12B in search ad revenue in 2022. At trial, the government presented extensive evidence about barriers to switching browsers. Given this evidence, presumably the bulk of Bing queries originate from Edge, and therefore, the bulk of the $12B can be attributed to Edge queries. Similar to Apple, Microsoft uses Edge to drive traffic to its own web properties and software suites, including Copilot (its AI chatbot), Microsoft 365, OneDrive, news, shopping, and others.

Firefox

The Mozilla Foundation is a California not-for-profit corporation that exists to improve and protect the internet as a public resource. Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned for-profit subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla Corporation’s flagship product and main source of income is Firefox. The finances of Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiaries are public.

Google’s 2021 revenue share payment to Mozilla Corporation was over $400M. The revenue share payment amounts to approximately 80% of Firefox’s income. The remainder of its income comes primarily from search deals with other search engines, subscriptions, ad revenue, and donations from philanthropies and individuals, for a total of over $500M. As of 2022, Mozilla also held over $1B in reserve funds, an amount that grew significantly over the previous decade in part because its search revenue exceeded the costs of maintaining Firefox despite the browser’s declining market share over that time period.

Other browsers

Other browsers in the market, such as Opera, Brave, and DuckDuckGo, are monetized through a combination of search revenue-sharing deals, advertising, subscriptions, rewards programs, and cross-subsidies from other products, such as VPNs and video calling.

Cost of running a browser and evolving the web platform

How much does it cost for a company to develop and maintain a browser and to evolve the web platform? Again, there is no easy answer here. Other than for Firefox, whose finances are public, there is no reliable public data about the costs of running the other browsers or browser engines.

This section provides estimates for how much Google and Mozilla spend on browsers, browser engines, and the evolution of the web platform (hereafter referred to as “web technologies”). Available estimates in the public domain of the browser costs of the large for-profit companies are based on information gleaned from current or former employees. The margin of error on those could be significant.

Chrome

Inside Google, work on web technologies is spread across many teams and business units. At various points in time, much of this work has been consolidated under the Chrome Browser, ChromeOS, and Web Platform teams. However, other teams focused on security, WebRTC, Android, Cloud, and other functions also build and contribute technologies that form part of Chrome/Chromium and the web ecosystem.

For a software business like Chrome, the bulk of its costs are personnel costs. Estimates of how many Google engineers and other staff work on web technologies range into the several thousands, split between Chrome Browser and the rest of the web technologies. To estimate how much Google spends on web technologies each year, assume the following:

• Most of the personnel involved in developing web technologies are engineers, but they also include product managers, sales, marketing, legal, customer support, and other functions.
• Given the complexity of Chrome and web technologies, the engineering teams skew towards higher levels of seniority. Assume that Staff Software Engineer is the most common engineering level represented across the web technologies teams, which is towards the more senior end of Google’s software engineering job ladder.
• The average base salary for Google employees working on web technologies is $240k and the average annual take-home pay is $500k, including salary, bonuses, and stock payments. These estimates are close to the current average base salary and take-home pay for Google Staff Software Engineers listed on industry salary data sites.
• Google has approximately 2000 staff working on web technologies.

Using the above assumptions, the estimated personnel cost for web technologies is 2000 * $596k = $1.2B. Of course there are additional costs associated with these businesses. Based on this sketch, it seems fair to assume that Google spends at least $1-2B annually on Chrome, Chromium, and the evolution of the web platform. Part of this expense is attributable to investments in web standards, shared libraries, and software development tools that get widely reused throughout the industry. Many dozens of Google employees contribute to standards development at the W3C, WHATWG, and IETF and develop shared libraries and tools.

Firefox

In 2022, Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiaries had $425M in expenses. This covers not only Firefox and the Mozilla Corporation but all of the other products and subsidiaries under the foundation, including the foundation’s own operations. In 2022, the foundation’s operational expenses – which are unrelated to Firefox – were $29M. Therefore, the costs associated with developing and maintaining Firefox and Gecko did not exceed $396M in 2022. This number exceeds the true cost of maintaining Firefox and Gecko since it includes all staff, administrative, marketing, and other costs associated with all of Mozilla’s other software products and subsidiaries aside from the foundation itself.

Mozilla Corporation employs roughly 1000 employees total, with about half of those working on the browser. Mozilla Corporation’s salaries and total compensation are substantially less than those of its larger competitors. Although industry salary data sites have far fewer data points on Mozilla salaries than they do for Google, existing data indicates that, on average, Mozilla Staff Software Engineer take-home pay is about half of what it is at Google.

As with Google, a portion of Mozilla Corporation’s expenses support contributions to standards and shared code development. Although Mozilla’s investments in these areas are naturally smaller than its browser competitors, in some ways it punches far above its weight in relative terms and has made critical contributions to foundational web standards. As estimated above, Google’s revenue from Chrome may be more than 150 times Mozilla’s annual revenue from Firefox, while Google likely dedicates only 5-10 times as many engineering resources to standardization as Firefox does. (The number of engineering resources each company dedicates to standards is based on a very rough estimate according to observed contributions to the W3C, WHATWG, and IETF.)

Cost Implications on Web Development

The two sketches above provide quite different views about how much it costs current browser companies to develop and maintain a browser, and to evolve the web platform. It is impossible to determine how much “should” be invested in web technologies in order to sustain the innovation needed to continue to offer compelling content, apps, and services to consumers and businesses. But these sketches provide some hints about the implications of potential Chrome divestiture scenarios for the future of the web’s evolution.

The Mozilla numbers provide an indication of a floor for reasonable investment. In recent years, Mozilla has spent less than $400M per year to maintain Firefox and Gecko. Although Firefox’s market share has been declining, it is a performant browser that has a good track record of shipping new web platform features sooner than some of its much larger competitors. However, Firefox incorporates and benefits from a variety of technologies built by Chrome engineers for Chromium, and Google invests more in evolving the web platform through standards and API development than Mozilla does.

Industry insiders may argue that Firefox is under-funded; its costs might not provide a good basis to make a determination about the investment needed for the open web. Nonetheless, the large disparity between the two cost sketches seems to indicate that Google’s current levels of investment are not strictly necessary for viable browsers, browser engines, and web platform innovations to continue to exist.

Alphabet is the fifth largest company in the world. Google has enjoyed monopoly profits in search (and perhaps display advertising) for a decade, and Google reportedly pays some of the highest salaries compared to its Big Tech competitors. Salaries propped up by monopoly revenue cannot be the basis to determine the true cost of maintaining a browser and associated web platform investments. Web technologies have certainly benefited from the fact that Google had excess cash it could invest, but that does not mean monopoly profits are required in order to sustain the web. The existence of Firefox at the other end of the cost spectrum suggests otherwise.

If Chrome is divested, finding a buyer with a business model that allows it to continue to invest somewhere above current Mozilla levels seems sensible, but the web does not risk certain extinction if the buyer cannot invest at Google’s current levels.

III. Public Interest Conditions on the Divestiture of Chrome

Concerns regarding the potential Chrome divestiture exhibit a sort of “stockholm syndrome” in some parts of the industry: fear of a world without the monopolist's resources. Indeed, when the open web has grown to be so dependent upon one dominant player, it is hard to anticipate exactly how a less encumbered market will evolve once the largesse of that player has been diminished. The analysis in the previous part suggests that these fears are overstated.

The revenue and cost analysis above indicates a divested entity can earn enough from its browser even without monopoly search revenue and even anticipating some decrease in market share, sufficient to make continued contributions to the web platform, albeit at lower levels than today. Critically, Google will remain incentivized to invest in the web platform regardless of whether it controls Chrome. Currently, its highest-grossing businesses (search, display advertising, and YouTube) all depend on the web continuing to offer content and services that users want. This could change over time as a result of other remedies imposed in search and ad tech antitrust litigation or due to advances in AI that diminish the web’s importance, but both of those factors may present independent threats to the web regardless of who owns Chrome. Google’s interest in the web remaining functional and performant does not depend on whether Chrome and Chromium change hands. If Chrome is divested, the conditions on the transaction should ensure that Google continues to have means and incentives to invest in the web.

The web does not need Google’s search monopoly to thrive. However, as described in the first section above, at present it does need Chromium. If the divestiture of Chrome is included in a final remedy package, it is important to consider what public interest conditions should be applied to the divested entity so that the web community can continue to benefit from and contribute to this important component of digital infrastructure. These conditions should include:

1. Open source Chromium. The acquirer should be required to maintain Chromium as an open-source software project in perpetuity. This means that:
   • All code, software, applications, APIs, and other products and services required for an independent third party to build a Chromium-based browser would remain freely available at no cost under a permissive open-source license with their source code and documentation available to the public.
   • Any developer would be allowed to download all Chromium code and build, develop, fork, deploy, or sell a browser based on or incorporating Chromium code, consistent with the permissive open-source license.
   • The service-level terms of software updates (e.g., timeliness of updates and bug fixes) would be governed by the governance structure specified below.
2. Chromium governance. The acquirer should be required to steward the Chromium open source project according to an open, non-discriminatory governance structure that must be reviewed and approved by the Technical Committee established by the court (see here for an example of such a structure).
   • The acquirer should be allowed to contribute and occupy any role in the governance structure and should have a decisional role in the event of disputes. The governance structure should also allow or require independent third parties to take on roles with responsibility for code or architecture review and approval.
   • The court should serve as the ultimate backstop in the event of governance disputes.
   • Google should be allowed to contribute and occupy any role in the governance structure as long as no decision about code or architecture review or approval rests solely with a Google contributor.
3. Independence of Chromium from Chrome. The acquirer should be required to maintain Chromium separately from Chrome (or the acquirer’s own successor browser product). The acquirer’s branded user interface, browser settings, and proprietary functionality and APIs adopted in its own browser should not be incorporated into the Chromium open source project.
4. Web standards support and contributions. The acquirer should be required to maintain support in Chromium for approved core industry standards promulgated by the W3C, WHATWG, IETF, and other related or successor organizations as identified by the Technical Committee. The Technical Committee should be resourced to articulate guidance and field complaints about which standards are considered “core.”
5. Commitment to royalty-free patent licensing. The acquirer must commit to offering a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to all patents it may acquire through the development of Chromium, Chrome, and their successors.

In addition to the safeguards that this suite of conditions would provide for the open web, they would also serve as constraints on the types of buyers interested in acquiring Chrome. Many different concerns have been expressed about the motivations and business models of potential Chrome buyers. Ad tech companies using the browser to extract user data and invade privacy (as Google does), private equity firms stripping the acquired entity down to its essentials and disregarding the web platform entirely, and content companies turning the browser into the ultimate walled garden or echo chamber machine are all scenarios of concern.

Requiring the buyer to support open-source Chromium with independent governance, standards investment, patent licensing, and separation from the branded Chrome browser would insulate the web ecosystem from many of the dangers these scenarios represent. First, the universe of buyers willing to take on these commitments is likely much smaller than it would be if the divestiture came with no conditions. Second, even if the buyer chooses to evolve Chrome in a more privacy-invasive direction or provides a more curated walled garden experience than users have come to expect from browsers, Chromium would still provide a robust open-source base for competitors to develop their own browser offerings. With the markets for both search and browsers (hopefully) becoming more contestable, these competitors would have a greater chance at gaining traction than they do today competing against Google’s vertically integrated Chrome.

Conclusion

Whether or not the Chrome divestiture is included in the final remedy package, this should be a moment of public recognition that the web can thrive without Google controlling it. While Google has made substantial investments in web technologies through Chrome and Chromium, these investments have been inflated by monopoly profits and are not the minimum required to sustain browser development and web platform innovation. Mozilla's success in maintaining Firefox on a fraction of Google's budget demonstrates that viable browsers and meaningful contributions to web standards can be sustained with more modest revenue streams.

The proposed divestiture of Chrome, if properly structured with appropriate public interest conditions, could help restore competition while preserving the benefits of Chromium as shared digital infrastructure. Key conditions on the acquiring entity should include maintaining Chromium as open-source software, establishing independent governance, keeping Chrome separate from Chromium, supporting web standards, and committing to royalty-free patent licensing. These conditions would help ensure continued innovation while preventing potential misuse by the acquirer.

To the extent that Google will retain strong incentives to invest in web technologies based on the needs of its core businesses, those incentives will remain whether Google controls Chrome or not. The combination of these ongoing investments, contributions from a divested Chrome/Chromium entity operating under appropriate conditions, and increased competition in both search and browsers can create a more vibrant and sustainable web ecosystem – one that better serves users and developers without depending on monopoly control.

Editor's note: Tech Policy Press is a recipient of a charitable donation from DuckDuckGo, a company mentioned this analysis.