Google presents its arguments against the sale of the Chrome browser to the US judiciary.

 Google presented its arguments against the US government's recommendation to sell its Chrome browser on Friday before a federal judge charged with determining punishment for the company, which has been convicted of monopolizing the internet search market.

After three weeks of arguments that concluded in early May, Friday's session was devoted to oral arguments before the judge's decision, expected by August.

The US Department of Justice is demanding that Google sell its Chrome browser and prevent it from entering into exclusive agreements with smartphone manufacturers to install its default search engine.

It is also demanding that the tech giant be forced to share the data it uses to generate search results on its browser.

The company's lawyer, John Schmidtlin, warned that "spinning Chrome off from Google would make it significantly less competitive than it is today," adding, "I don't understand how anyone can claim that competition will be enhanced."

He pointed out that "80% of Chrome users live outside the United States," noting that forcing Google to abandon its browser "will affect all of those people" for whom Chrome is "a window to the world."

Google is proposing more limited measures, including allowing phone manufacturers to pre-install the Google Play app store, but not Chrome or the search engine.

Government representative David Dahlquist responded by saying, "Google argues that creating a subsidiary would be an extreme measure, but this type of deal is common in this type of case and has been successfully implemented in other competition cases."

John Schmidtlin emphasized that the government did not present evidence that Google's competitors would have gained greater market share without the giant conglomerate's exclusivity agreements.

He cited the example of the American telecom company Verizon, which, despite its acquisition of the Yahoo! search engine, has been able to gain market share. In 2017, it chose to install Google's search engine on its smartphones without even committing to a contract with the American giant.

This trial is of great importance to Google, whose search engine is facing increasing pressure from generative AI assistants, from ChatGPT to Perplexity, which also have the ability to draw on information published online.