Tech
Is Chrome going to be Yahoo’s?
Is Chrome going to be Yahoo's?
Yahoo wants to buy Chrome?
And it’s prototyping its own web browser.
Yahoo, a legacy search company, has been developing a prototype of its own web browser and has stated that it would like to purchase Google Chrome should the company be ordered by a court to sell it.
On the fourth day of the Justice Department’s trial for remedies to end Google’s search monopoly, the information was revealed. Among other things, the DOJ has asked Judge Amit Mehta to order Google to sell its Chrome browser in order to dismantle the company. The DOJ claims that Chrome is a vital distribution route for its well-known search engine, which has accumulated too much power for rivals to match. There are other companies interested in purchasing Chrome besides Yahoo. The CEO of DuckDuckGo stated that they would not be able to afford it, but this week’s witnesses from Perplexity and OpenAI both showed interest in the well-known browser.
Yahoo appears to concur that having a web browser is a crucial search engine and is considering creating or purchasing one of its own. According to Brian Provost, general manager of Yahoo Search, roughly 60% of search queries are conducted in a web browser; many users start their searches from the address bar. According to Provost’s testimony, Yahoo has been “actively internally developing a prototype of a browser” since last summer in order to determine what it would need to do in order to release one onto the market. He went on to say that Yahoo is in “ongoing” talks with other businesses about purchasing a browser, but he would not say which companies are involved in the talks.
According to Provost, Yahoo will need six to nine months to prototype its own browser. It would probably be much quicker to ramp up to scale by purchasing Chrome. Provost referred to Chrome as “arguably the most important strategic player on the web” and predicted that if Yahoo were able to purchase the browser, its search market share would increase from 3% to double digits. With the support of its owner, Apollo Global Management, Yahoo would be able to secure the tens of billions of dollars that he estimated the deal would cost. Provost stated that he would not consider Apollo’s browser brand, which was the subject of a separate antitrust case, to be an active browser. What is the name of the brand? NetScape.