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

If you missed it, the DOJ recently recommended Google sell Chrome over online search monopoly issues. Google has already said this would harm consumers and developers, and proposed to make its contracts more flexible. 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. The court hearing is set for April 2025, but the company already said it will appeal ahead of it. So, we’ll see how they navigate this whole ‘monopoly’ situation in the coming weeks.