Google’s Monopoly Battle And Updates On The $350M Investor Settlement

If you missed it, the DOJ recently presented its final proposal against Google’s “online search monopoly”. They recommended selling Chrome, though Google already said this would harm consumers and developers. While today’s focus is on Google’s search monopoly, it’s not the first time the company has faced scrutiny. In 2018, WSJ reported that Google found a "glitch" in Google+ earlier that year, which affected data security. Between 2015 and March 2018, this glitch allowed outside developers access to almost 500k (!!) users' data. And despite discovering these issues in March 2018, Google didn't inform anybody about them to avoid regulatory issues. Simply - they didn't want "problems with regulators which can affect their reputation" as they said. They were hit with many suits due to this, and finally, they resolved with $350M the one for the investors over stock drops, so if you invested in GOOG you can [check it out](https://11thestate.com/cases/alphabet-investor-settlement) (they are also accepting late claims even after the deadline). Now, Google claims that selling Chrome would make it harder to keep it secure, and it plans to appeal against the ruling. So, we’ll see how they navigate this whole ‘monopoly’ situation in the coming weeks.