Yahoo is also ready to buy Google Chrome

Yahoo has a complicated history with Google, and has repeatedly lost the opportunity to acquire the Internet giant's assets. In 1998, the search engine AltaVista, which later became part of Yhaoo, refused to buy Google for $1 million. And in 2002, Yahoo itself offered to buy Google for $3 billion, but withdrew from negotiations after a counteroffer of $5 billion. However, this disappointing experience does not prevent Yahoo from looking for new opportunities to get at least a piece of Google.

Yahoo has said it is ready to acquire the Google Chrome browser if a court orders it to sell it as part of the US Department of Justice's case regarding Google's alleged monopoly position in the search business, The Verge reports.

Yahoo's search general manager, Brian Provost, said that about 60% of all searches come directly from the browser address bar. "Owning a web browser is a very important portal for search," he said, adding that Yahoo has been "actively developing a prototype of its own browser" since last summer.

Provost estimated that building and testing its own browser would take 6-9 months. Instead, he argues that "Acquiring Chrome would likely be a much faster way to ramp up to scale." He described Chrome as "the most important strategic player on the web" and noted that combining Yahoo's search with Chrome's extensive distribution network could boost Yahoo's share from its current roughly 3% to double digits.

The Justice Department is proposing that the court break up Google by forcing the company to sell Chrome, which is a key channel for redirecting users to Google's search engine and strengthens the tech giant's position. In addition to Yahoo, representatives of artificial intelligence search rivals Perplexity and OpenAI expressed interest in acquiring Chrome if it were to be sold at the hearing, while DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg said his company would not be able to afford such a purchase.

Interestingly, Apollo owns the rights to the Netscape brand, a browser that was the subject of a landmark antitrust case in the late 1990s. However, Provost emphasized that Netscape is not currently operating as an active product.