'I don't think it could be recreated': Chrome chief dismisses browser's 'existence' without Google at US antitrust trial

Google Chrome ’s general manager, Parisa Tabriz , has said that the browser cannot ‘exist’ without the tech giant. During an antitrust trial in Washington, US, the company’s executive said that Google is the only company capable of supporting Chrome’s current feature set, due to its deep “interdependencies” with its parent company Alphabet’s infrastructure. Speaking before Judge Amit Mehta at the US Justice Department’s case, Tabriz explained that critical browser functions—like its safe browsing mode and password-breach alerts—draw on shared Google systems, which are beyond Chrome’s codebase. She argued that separating Chrome from the rest of the company would be an unprecedented technical challenge.

“Chrome today represents 17 years of collaboration between the Chrome people and the rest of Google. Trying to disentangle that is unprecedented. I don’t think it could be recreated,” Tabriz said to the court, as reported by Bloomberg.

Tabriz said this as Judge Mehta presides over a three-week hearing to determine what changes Google must make to its business practices, after last year’s finding that the company illegally monopolised the search market.

The US Justice Department wants Google to divest its Chrome browser and provide a portion of its collected data for use in competing search results. It also asked Judge Mehta to prohibit Google from paying to secure default search-engine status—a restriction that would extend to its AI offerings, including Gemini, which the government argues benefited from Google’s unlawful search monopoly.

Google Chrome chief's concern with browser's ownership

Google’s Chrome browser, which holds roughly 66% of the global market as of March, is built atop the open-source Chromium Project and accepts contributions from companies like Meta, Microsoft and the Linux Foundation.

During the Justice Department’s antitrust remedies hearing, Harvard professor James Mickens testified that spinning off Chrome to a new owner “is feasible from a technical perspective” and could be done “without breaking too much” of its functionality; he added that Google would still have incentives to maintain Chromium for Android and other uses, the report noted.

However, Tabriz countered that by saying that Google has supplied over 90% of Chromium’s code since 2015 and invests hundreds of millions annually in its development.

She noted, “Google invests hundreds of millions of dollars into Chromium,” estimating that 1,000 engineers in her division have worked on the project. Tabriz added that other companies “are not contributing now in any meaningful way.”