Dave Michaels

The Justice Department on Wednesday said Google should have to sell off its popular Chrome browser as part of a court-ordered fix to its monopolization of the online search market. The request follows the government’s victory this year in an antitrust case against Google and is likely to kick off a heightened legal fight with wide-reaching implications for the tech giant’s core business. Government lawyers said competition can only be restored if Google separates its search engine from products it has built to access the internet, such as Chrome and its Android mobile operating system.

A spinoff would be a major blow to Google following its loss in the antitrust trial.

The president-elect’s new SEC chair will likely withdraw from lawsuits aimed at forcing crypto to follow Wall Street rules.

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday picked conservative lawyer Paul Atkins to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, choosing a regulatory skeptic who will be expected to curb the agency’s enforcement division. Atkins, well known in Congress and on Wall Street, served as a Republican member of the SEC during the Bush administration, when he sometimes opposed regulations he argued were unnecessarily burdensome. If confirmed as the next SEC chair, Atkins isn’t expected to dismantle core investor protections, but is likely to re-examine or revise much of what the agency did during the Biden administration.

The president-elect says he will elevate Andrew Ferguson to succeed Lina Khan as chair and nominate Mark Meador as a commissioner.

The ruling hands a victory to Biden antitrust enforcers, who said the $20 billion supermarket merger would erode competition and raise prices for consumers.

Paul Bilzerian has been on the run from the Securities and Exchange Commission for so long that he now owes the agency $180 million with interest—almost three times what a court initially ordered him to pay. For 31 years, the agency has tried and failed to collect a $62 million judgment against the former corporate raider for securities fraud. The financier told The Wall Street Journal in 2014 that he “would rather starve to death than earn a dollar to feed myself and pay the government a penny of it.”

Suit alleges smaller outlets didn't get same deals as Walmart.