News broke this week that the US Department of Justice wants to force Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell Chrome, its dominant web browser. That has led to much head scratching in the tech industry. Sure, Chrome is an important moat for Google’s business, but is it really the source of the company’s power? And if a company buys Chrome for an estimated $20 billion, wouldn’t that mean someone else controls two-thirds of the browser market?
Read the tea leaves carefully and there’s more happening here. The DOJ, for one, seems to be moving quickly to get ahead of any efforts by the incoming Trump administration (of which more, later) to shut down its most ambitious work in decades. There’s something larger looming on the horizon.