The U.S. Department of Justice is planning on asking a judge to compel Alphabet, the parent company of Google, to sell off its Chrome browser, according to a report from Bloomberg on Monday.
Chrome, according to stats provided by SimilarWeb, is the most popular web browser in the U.S., with 54% of Americans using it as their default browser; the next most-used browser is Apple’s Safari, which 33.4% of Americans use first.
Monday’s report comes after the same judge, Amit Mehta, sided with the DOJ in August and ruled Google broke antitrust laws in order to hold its monopoly on web searches.
“Google is a monopolist and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” U.S. District Judge Mehta ruled in August.
The DOJ plans on officially unveiling its plans to break off Chrome from Google on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported.
The report also comes a month after the DOJ said it was considering breaking up Google in order to curb the company’s search engine monopoly.
“The starting point for addressing Google’s unlawful conduct is undoing its effects on search distribution,” the DOJ said in its October filing. “For more than a decade, Google has controlled the most popular distribution channels, leaving rivals with little-to-no incentive to compete for users.”
Reps for Alphabet did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Last month, Alphabet said in a blog post that “splitting off Chrome or Android would break them — and many other things.”
“We’ve invested billions of dollars in Chrome and Android. Breaking them would change their business models, raise the cost of devices, and undermine competition with Apple,” Google said in its blog post.
“Chrome is a secure, fast, and free browser and its open-source code provides the backbone for numerous competing browsers. Android is a secure, innovative, and free open-source operating system that has enabled vast choice in the smartphone market, helping to keep the cost of phones low for billions of people.”
It’s unclear how much money Chrome contributes to Alphabet’s total sales. The tech giant recently reported $88.3 billion in Q3 sales, which includes $8.92 billion from YouTube.
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