I am a CEO that bid for the Google Chrome browser. Even if we do not win, this is why it is a fork on the road for digital capitalism

What is happening will then determine whether this effort produces a lasting change – or simply recycles the monopoly power from one technology giant to another.

At the heart of the case is Chrome, the most popular browser in the world. For billions of people, it is the ramp on the Internet: the tool that shapes the way we are looking for, shopping, communicating and learning. Whoever controls Chrome not only controls enormous advertising revenues, but also the flow of web information.

There is a high probability that Chrome can become the main platform for AI assistants and agency navigation. Ideally, it would be open to all AI players – even smaller – and not controlled by Big Tech.

This is why the challenges of this decision could not be higher.

The risk of recycling monopolies

The easiest way to follow for Google, if it is forced to come from judge Mehta, would be to sell Chrome to another deep pocket player. Names like Openai and rival companies of large technologies are already running. But that would be a serious mistake.

The transfer of chrome from a monopoly to the next would strengthen the very dynamics that the court has just sought to dismantle. He would concentrate more energy in the hands of a small business club, would strengthen surveillance -focused commercial models and maintain regulators who continue in a decade in a decade.

A new model: stewardship

There is another way. Instead of putting Chrome to the most bidder, we must use this decision to test a different governance model: stewardship.

The stewardship means managing a critical digital platform for the benefit of users and society, not just shareholders. This means putting stability, opening and responsibility in the long term before quarterly yields. And this means using the extraordinary benefits generated by assets like Chrome to invest in the public interest – whether climate action, safeguarding open infrastructure or supporting online democratic resilience.

How could it work

It is not as eccentric as it may seem. My own organization, Ecosia, proposed an arrangement of stewardship for Chrome: separating the browser into a foundation, with an operational responsibility entrusted to a goalkeeper focused on the mission for a fixed period.

The profits would be reinvested in climate action, while Google would still be offset. At the end of the quarter, a transparent process would name the next steward.

But the wider point does not concern ecosy. It is a question of creating a path where technological organizations focused on values ​​- other technological impact companies, for example – can intensify their own visions on how Chrome could be managed in the public interest. Everyone can emphasize different priorities: user confidentiality, open web, climate sustainability. The crucial thing is that stewardship, not the transfer of monopoly, becomes the leading principle.

The biggest price

Consider it as a fork on the road to capitalism in the digital age.

Chrome is an asset of billions of dollars. Calculated in shareholders’ yields, it deepens inequalities and consolidates the power of businesses. Calculated towards stewardship, it becomes one of the most powerful tools that humanity has never had to meet shared challenges – against the protection of cities against floods and forest fires to fuel clean energy transition.

We are faced with the destruction of large-scale ecosystems, mass extinction, billions of refugees and perhaps the end of society as we know it. At Ecosia, we have developed a plan led by science on how to avoid this.

The cost of this is enormous, but, via chrome management for the planet – there is still ample space to return enormous benefits to Google – much more in the long term than an acquisition would bring.

Regulators rarely obtain opportunities of this scale. In most antitrust cases, the active ingredients are too fragmented, too niche or too reduced to fundamentally change the system. Chrome is different. It is the central infrastructure. If even a fraction of its profits is redirected from the private monopoly to a public good, we would establish a precedent that technology can be governed for people and the planet, not only for profit.

The upcoming choice

It also counts for democracy. Confidence in the Internet has been eroded because a handful of companies have dominated online life.

The displacement of Chrome in a structure led by intendants would send a powerful signal: that regulators do not shine simply on the fringes, but seriously to create a healthier digital ecosystem where competition, equity and responsibility can prosper. The alternative is to miss this opportunity – and to look back in ten years on another antitrust wasted decision, wondering why the concentration has deepened, innovation has withered and our collective challenges have aggravated.

Judge Mehta opened the door. Now regulators, political decision -makers and the wider technological community must browse it. They must withstand the easy option of a quick sale to the most offender and rather invite proposals for organizations engaged in the public interest.

It is a rare chance to prove that the digital infrastructure can be executed differently – that stewardship, and not monopoly, is the model adapted to the 21st century. Do not waste it.

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