Who Will Gain from Google Selling Chrome?

Regulators in the US are forcing Google to sell Chrome, its web browser, to prevent being labeled a monopoly. It's one part of a bigger plan the Department of Justice has to break up Google's stronghold on online advertising.

Google has been under the gun for quite a while as the US government aims to make advertising online more fair. The latest move comes from the logic that Google has the most used web browser where Google is the search engine giving its ads for search platform an unfair advantage. Couple that with Google being the default search engine on the iPhone and you have yourself a monopoly - or so says the government.

On mobile, much like the web, Chrome has the highest market share in terms of new downloads.

How big is its share? Who stands to gain the most if Chrome changes hands? And, which platform consumes more 3rd party browsers?

Let’s have a look at the downloads.

I compared the downloads of the top browsers this year, which include Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Brave, and it's clear that Chrome is the biggest in terms of downloads. It accounted for 35% of the downloads within the top 5 in 2024.

Appfigures estimates show that Chrome saw nearly 70M new downloads so far in 2024, and we expect it to end the year with 80M. That's more than twice as many downloads as second place Microsoft Edge saw in the same period.

It's interesting to see Chrome's biggest market is iPhones while it's the exact opposite for everyone else. That's a clear indication of which users are most important to Google.

Edge and Opera are seeing almost identical downloads at a little under 40M each, and we expect them to grow enough to beat last year's downloads. The two stand the most to gain from Chrome's unknown future.

Wait, why would they gain??

Well... Looking at Chrome's downloads trend, it's very clear something happened this year, and downloads are dropping fast. Although the year started with high downloads - higher than 2023's - downloads declined as the government's pressure on Google rose. As of October, downloads were down 14% vs last year and November is looking much worse.

That suggests Google has pumped the breaks on user acquisition, or at least slowed it down, because to Google Chrome being owned anyone else has no value so there's no reason to grow it for now.

And that's a big opportunity for its competitors. Who do you think will take the crown?