The U.S. government has asked a federal court to force Google to sell Chrome. 

The request, made through the Justice Department, follows a landmark ruling in August by Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that found Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online search. 

If it scaled through, the antitrust case could alter the $2 trillion company’s business and reshape competition on the internet.

Mr Mehta has asked the Justice Department and states that brought the antitrust case to submit solutions to correct the search monopoly. 

The U.S. government has also asked Mehta to give Google a choice. 

The choice is either to sell Android, its smartphone operating system or bar Google from making its services mandatory on the phones that use Android to operate. 

The government also asked the judge to stop Google from entering into paid agreements with Apple and others to be automatically selected as the smartphone’s search engine.  

“The playing field is not level because of Google’s conduct, and Google’s quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired. The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages,” the government said in the filing.

Google has also been required by the court to allow rival search engines to display the company’s results and access its data for a decade. 

Since the Justice Department had asked to break up Microsoft in 2000, the proposals are the most significant remedies requested in a tech antitrust case. 

Google is set to file its own suggestions for fixing the search monopoly by December 20, 2024. 

Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, called the government’s proposal “extreme.”

“DOJ’s wildly overbroad proposal goes miles beyond the court’s decision.  It would break a range of Google products — even beyond search — that people love and find helpful in their everyday lives,” he said. 

If the judge adopts that proposal, the outcome will set the tone for other antitrust cases that challenge the dominance of tech behemoths including Apple, Amazon and Meta. 

Chrome, introduced in 2008 and free to use, is the most popular web browser in the world. According to Statcounter, it makes up an estimated 67 per cent of the global browser market, which compiles tech market data. 

Google’s search engine is bundled into Chrome.

Android is the world’s most popular mobile software, accounting for 71 per cent of the market. 

Both sides can modify their requests before Judge Mehta is expected to hear arguments on the remedies this spring.