OpenAI Head of Product Nick Turley has told a judge overseeing the remedy phase of Google LLC’s antitrust trial that his company would be very interested in buying the Chrome browser if given a chance to do so.

After Google was found guilty of running an illegal monopoly in search last year, the Department of Justice is now pushing for a number of remedies to be imposed on Google, one of its suggestions being to force the company to sell Chrome.

It would be a severe punishment for Google, and the presiding Judge Amit Mehta has already expressed skepticism over the proposal. Nonetheless, the DOJ insists that the browser is a key enabler of Google’s anticompetitive conduct, and believes a forced sale would go a long way towards leveling the playing field.

There should be plenty of takers too. When asked if his company would be interested in buying Chrome, Turley made it quite clear that it’s interested. “Yes, we would, as would many other parties,” Turley said, as reported by The Information.

OpenAI has expressed an interest in creating its own Chromium-based browser to help it compete with Google in Search. It may even be working on some kind of product already, having hired former Google developers Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher, who helped design Chrome, in November.

Chrome, with its 3 billion users globally giving it a 67% share of the browser market, would be a tempting target for many companies. In the case of OpenAI, it would mean access to a massive installed base that has long been pushed to use Google’s services, including its search engine, its email and its artificial intelligence products.

If OpenAI were to own Chrome, it would be able to integrate ChatGPT with the entire browsing experience, Turley told the court. In addition, the company would benefit immensely from the invaluable user data amassed by Chrome, likely leading to the development of more AI agents that can automate browser operations.

Still, if Google really is forced to sell Chrome, the browser would not necessarily be auctioned off to the highest bidder. There’s also the possibility that it could be spun off as an independent company. Google has always insisted that Chrome wouldn’t be able to survive alone, but it might be preferable to selling the browser to one of its rivals.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said the biggest question for the judge regards how a forced disposal of Chrome would impact Google’s stranglehold on search.

“If Chrome is split from Google, it will likely try to sell its user’s browsing data to advertisers, and it will be the usual suspects that bid for it,” the analyst said.

Turley was also asked about a second remedy proposed by the DOJ, which involves forcing Google to share search data with its competitors. Responding, he said OpenAI had previously approached Google to propose a data sharing deal, only for the company to reject it out of hand.

“We believe in having multiple partners, and in particular Google’s API would enable us to provide a much better product to our users,” OpenAI previously wrote in an email to Google.

According to Turley, Google rejected the deal because it believes that any data sharing would likely harm its lead in the search business. He added that if Google were forced to license its search data, it would go some way toward restoring competition in the search industry and help his own company to “build a better product faster.”

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