What happens next will determine whether that effort produces lasting change — or simply recycles monopoly power from one tech giant to another.
At the heart of the case is Chrome, the world’s most popular browser. For billions of people, it is the on-ramp to the internet: the tool that shapes how we search, shop, communicate, and learn. Whoever controls Chrome controls not only enormous advertising revenues, but also the flow of information across the web.
There is a high probability that Chrome could become the leading platform for AI Assistants and agentic browsing. Ideally this would be open for all AI players — even smaller ones — and not controlled by Big Tech.
That is why the stakes of this ruling could not be higher.
The risk of recycling monopolies
The simplest path forward for Google, if forced to by Judge Mehta’s upcoming ruling, would be to sell Chrome to another deep-pocketed player. Names like OpenAI and rival Big Tech firms are already circling. But this would be a grave mistake.
Transferring Chrome from one monopoly to the next would entrench the very dynamics the court has just sought to dismantle. It would concentrate power further in the hands of a small club of companies, reinforce surveillance-driven business models, and keep regulators chasing their tails a decade from now.
A new model: stewardship
There is another way. Instead of handing Chrome over to the highest bidder, we should use this ruling to test a different model of governance: stewardship.
Stewardship means running a critical digital platform for the benefit of users and society, not just shareholders. It means putting long-term stability, openness, and accountability ahead of quarterly returns. And it means using the extraordinary profits generated by assets like Chrome to invest in the public interest – whether that is climate action, safeguarding open infrastructure, or supporting democratic resilience online.
How it could work
This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. My own organisation, Ecosia, has proposed a stewardship arrangement for Chrome: separating the browser into a foundation, with operational responsibility entrusted to a mission-driven custodian for a fixed term.
Profits would be reinvested in climate action, while Google would still be compensated handsomely. At the end of the term, a transparent process would appoint the next steward.
But the broader point is not about Ecosia. It is about creating a pathway where values-driven tech organisations — other impact tech firms, for example — can step up with their own visions for how Chrome could be run in the public interest. Each might emphasise different priorities: user privacy, the open web, climate sustainability. The crucial thing is that stewardship, not monopoly transfer, becomes the governing principle.
The bigger prize
Think of it as a fork in the road for capitalism in the digital era.
Chrome is a trillion-dollar asset. Channelled into shareholder returns, it deepens inequality and consolidates corporate power. Channelled into stewardship, it becomes one of the most powerful tools humanity has ever had to address shared challenges — from protecting cities from flooding and wildfires to powering the clean-energy transition.
We are facing large-scale ecosystem destruction, mass extinction, billions of refugees and possibly the end of society as we know it. At Ecosia, we have developed a science-led plan on how to avert this.
The cost of this is enormous, but, via a stewardship of Chrome for the planet — there is still ample room to return huge profits to Google — much more in the long run than an acquisition would bring.
Regulators rarely get opportunities of this scale. In most antitrust cases, assets are too fragmented, too niche, or too diminished to fundamentally shift the system. Chrome is different. It is the central infrastructure. If even a fraction of its profits are redirected from private monopoly to public good, we would set a precedent that technology can be governed for people and the planet, not just for profit.
The choice ahead
This also matters for democracy. Trust in the internet has eroded as a handful of companies have come to dominate online life.
Moving Chrome into a steward-run structure would send a powerful signal: that regulators are not simply tinkering at the margins, but serious about creating a healthier digital ecosystem where competition, fairness, and accountability can thrive. The alternative is to miss this opportunity – and look back in ten years on another wasted antitrust ruling, wondering why concentration deepened, innovation withered, and our collective challenges grew worse.
Judge Mehta has opened the door. Now regulators, policymakers, and the wider tech community must walk through it. They must resist the easy option of a quick sale to the highest bidder, and instead invite proposals from organisations committed to the public interest.
This is a rare chance to prove that digital infrastructure can be run differently — that stewardship, not monopoly, is the model fit for the 21st century. Let’s not squander it.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
Politics8 years ago