WSJ What’s News - Google Must Sell Chrome Browser, DOJ Says

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

A.M. Edition for Nov. 21. The Justice Department says Google should spin off its popular browser as part of a court-ordered fix to its monopolization of the online-search market. Plus, Ukraine says Russia fired an intercontinental ballistic missile against it for the first time in the war. And the WSJ’s Sara Randazzo breaks down Donald Trump’s plans for the Education Department, starting with his selection of a loyalist to head it. Luke Vargas hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The DOJ says that Google should be forced to sell its Chrome web browser. Plus, NVIDIA's sales soar, but topping investor expectations for the company is becoming increasingly difficult. And we'll go inside Donald Trump's push to eliminate the Education Department. The question is, is he just going to eliminate a bureaucracy and send these functions to other agencies, or is he actually going to reduce federal support in a substantial way to schools? It's Thursday, November 21st.

I'm Luke Varkas for The Wall Street Journal Journal and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin with an update on the U.S. government's successful antitrust case against Google. The Department of Justice says Google should be forced to sell off its popular Chrome web browser as part of a suite of requested remedies that a told judge are needed to fix the company's monopolization of the online search market. The DOJ also requested Google be prevented from giving preferential access to its search

engine on the billions of devices that use its Android mobile operating system and that if it was found to violate that rule, it should also be forced to sell Android. Journal reporter Miles Krupa in San Francisco reacted to the DOJ's requested remedies. The Department of Justice has been clear that it's seeking all possibilities here, structural remedies such as divestitures and more behavioral remedies. all possibilities here,

structural remedies such as divestitures, and more behavioral remedies. In some ways, it's not totally unexpected that they would ask for a divestiture of Chrome, with third parties, not its own self-preferencing on the Chrome browser. So this is going to be a real test of how far antitrust laws can go in limiting the conduct of a large company like Google in the year 2024, or as it may be 2025. A Google executive described the DOJ's suggested remedy as wildly overbroad and said the company

would file its own proposed remedy next month. A trial to decide how to address Google's antitrust violations is scheduled to begin in April, with a judge in the case saying he plans to finalize his decision by August. Well also in the DOJ's crosshairs is Gautam Adani, the billionaire founder of one of India's biggest conglomerates, who was charged yesterday with orchestrating a $250 million bribery scheme to secure lucrative solar energy supply contracts. Prosecutors allege the executive personally met with Indian officials to advance the illicit deal and secure contracts worth billions of dollars for one of his companies. And that he and others misrepresented the company's anti-bribery and corruption practices

to U.S. investors and financial institutions. Eight executives have been charged in total. In a statement, the Adani Group denied the allegations, calling them baseless. Shares in Adani Group companies fell sharply on the news today. Ukraine says Russia has fired an intercontinental ballistic missile targeting the city of Dnipro, which if confirmed would be the first time Moscow has used an ICBM in the war. According to Ukraine's Air Force, the ICBM was fired along with eight other missiles in an attack that local authorities say wounded two people.

ICBMs are designed to carry nuclear warheads and their use would mark a sharp escalation in the war as well as a reminder of Russia's nuclear capability just days after Ukrainian forces began using newly authorized Western missiles to hit targets inside Russia. On Capitol Hill, the Senate has rejected multiple efforts by Vermont's Bernie Sanders to stop the sale of offensive weapons to Israel, with only 17 to 19 senators backing measures that would have prevented the transfer of certain tank and mortar rounds and guidance kits attached to bombs. Speaking before the votes, Sanders described them as a test of America's credibility on the world stage. How do you critique Iran for their terrible human rights record?

How do you critique China or Russia for their terrible human rights records? Because if you get here on the floor of the Senate and you make that critique, people around the world will laugh at you." Sanders' push comes after the Biden administration led a 30-day deadline for Israel to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza come and go. The administration previously warned Israel it risked a cut to arms sales if it failed to reverse what it called the downward humanitarian trajectory in the territory. NVIDIA's shares are slipping in off-hours trading after its results, another quarter of

surging sales and profits, failed to meet the lofty expectations of investors who've been piling into the stock. However, NVIDIA's revenue projections for the current quarter suggest that its next-generation AI chips, known as Blackwell, are in high demand from customers like Microsoft, Google, Meta and XAI. Asa Fitch covers NVIDIA for the journal. NVIDIA had had some issues manufacturing those chips in its previous quarter and it took a significant amount of charges, in fact more than $900 million of charges in its previous quarter and it took a significant amount of charges, in fact more than 900 million dollars of charges in its last quarter because of

that. But this time around, if anything, the company projected that Blackwell, its next-generation chips, were set to do very well. They said they were expecting even better revenue from those chips than they had previously discussed. They previously talked about several billion dollars of revenue in the current quarter that's going to end in January here. So now they're saying that things are looking better than they thought before. And in other markets news, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup XAI has told investors that it raised five billion dollars in its latest funding round, valuing the company at about 50 billion dollars, more than twice what it wasing the company at about $50 billion,

more than twice what it was valued at several months ago. According to our reporting, Qatar's Sovereign Wealth Fund and investment firms Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz are expected to take part in the round. XAI plans to use the new cash in part to finance the purchase of 100,000 additional Nvidia chips for training AI models. Coming up, Journal Education reporter Sarah Randazzo joins us to explain what Donald Trump's selection of Linda McMahon tells us about his plans for the Education Department.

That's after the break. Light up Black Friday with Freedom Mobile and get 50 gigs to use in Canada, the US, and Mexico for just $35 a month for 18 months. Plus get a one-time gift of 5 gigs of Rome Beyond data. Condition supply details at freedommobile.ca. Donald Trump said this week that quote, we will send education back to the states and Linda will spearhead that effort. The Linda Trump is referring to is Linda McMahon, whom he's nominating for education secretary

overseeing a department that the president-elect has vowed to dismantle. And to find out more about those plans, our Kate Bulevent spoke to Journal Education reporter Sarah Randazzo. So Sarah, let's start with Trump's pick for Education Secretary. Linda McMahon is probably most well known for being the co-founder of WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment. But could you tell us a little bit more about her and her views on education? So she was definitely a surprise pick in education circles, but what

Linda McMahon is, is a real Trump loyalist. She has served on the transition team. She's helped raise tons of money for him and fundraise. And so she's someone who's close to the president and had been widely seen as the leading contender for the commerce secretary job. So when that position went elsewhere, some are seeing this as a bit of a consolation prize, I suppose. But she does have a little bit of education we could find in her

background. She supports school choice, which is a bit of a euphemism for supporting options away from the traditional public schools, such as going to charter school or maybe homeschooling or private school or options like that. And also she supports tougher accountability and local oversight in education. So what does Trump's pick for education secretary tell us about his plans for the department? Yeah, it's hard to tell how Linda McMahon's choice in particular impacts this, but on the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly said he would get rid of the education department and there's been a lot of speculation on what that would mean and how he would do it.

The big question is whether by dismantling the department he would actually shut down the programs and supports that it provides for schools. Some of the big ones are money that the education department helps oversee that it sends to schools with low income students and students with disabilities. And so the question is, is he just going to eliminate a bureaucracy and send these functions to other agencies or is he actually going to reduce federal support in a substantial way to schools? Really the majority of education is run locally through local and state dollars A lot of it is tax dollars and other money the federal money on an average makes up about 10% of school budgets for K to 12

School districts it varies by state interestingly we did the math in the 14 states who get the largest proportion of their education budget from the federal government all voted for Trump this term. And so it's not the majority of a budget, but if you got rid of 10% of funding, school districts would have to scramble to find ways to meet those needs. So with that in mind, are Trump and McMahon likely to actually shut down the education department? You know, I'm not in the prediction business, so I don McMahon likely to actually shut down the education department? I'm not in the prediction business, so I don't want to say, but there will definitely be discussions about it.

There's probably steps they could take immediately on their own. I don't know if that would be a reduction in workforce, something like that. But to actually fundamentally change the department and get rid of it would take quite a bit of support from Congress. So it remains to be seen whether that can be achieved. Another thing Trump has promised to do is to fight the so-called woke curriculum, meaning left-wing ideology in schools and universities.

How would he go about doing this? Yeah, this is one of the contradictions in what the president-elect has said about the education department because the federal government really can't, by law, they really cannot dictate what shows up in individual classrooms across the country. And so at the same time that he says he wants to get rid of what curriculum, that isn't really a function that the federal government could do, at least under our current system.

That was Journal Education reporter Sarah Randazzo. Sarah, thanks so much for your time. Sure thing, thanks. And that's it for What's News for Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Kate Bulevant and Daniel Bach with supervising producer Christina Rocca. And I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching!