Should Firefox die to punish Google?

US v. Google: all the news from the search antitrust showdown

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Posted May 30, 2025 at 5:51 PM UTC

Mehta poses a weighty question to the DOJ: how seriously should he take the dire warnings that companies Google pays for default placement, including Mozilla, have made during testimony? “Every single distribution partner ... has said, this would harm us. This would harm us. Some have gone so far as to suggest this would put them out of business,” Mehta says. “Is that an acceptable outcome to fix one market at the risk of harming others? Because that’s what these other folks are telling us.” Mozilla, for instance, has said its Google deal provides the vast majority of its revenue.

“We don’t dispute the possibility of some private impact,” Dahlquist responds, though he disputes the magnitude. He argues that these warnings are still speculative, and that the issue at hand now is how to fix Google’s monopoly. Mehta seems dubious, saying a dramatic remedy could amount to him damaging the phone and browser market — both of which, incidentally, Google operates in. How, he asks, should he balance breaking Google’s hold on search with serving the larger public good?

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