Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- As Google faces threats of being forced to divest itself of Chrome, speculators are betting on the odds of that sale happening.
- Betters on Polymarket have started putting money on the outcome of the legal battle.
- Right now, the odds are giving Google only about a 30% chance of having to go through with a sale.
Google is staring down maybe one of the most existential threats to face the company in years, as the US Department of Justice shared its recommendation last night that Google sell off the Chrome browser — and maybe think about getting rid of Android, too. It’s difficult to immediately picture what a transition like that would even look like, as Search and Chrome have been intertwined since the latter’s inception. Google has already stepped to emphatically argue why the government’s plan would be a disaster for everyone, and while the company will almost certainly do everything in its power to avoid this fate, ultimately it won’t get final say. So what are the odds this actually happens, and Google is forced to sell Chrome?
Right now, there’s no shortage of tech pundits lining up to offer their own takes on this news, and make predictions about how likely Google’s worst-case scenario could be to actually happening. And while we could summarize some of the more popular opinions being shared, what if we just let the bets speak for themselves? Because over on Polymarket, people are putting real money on the likelihood of this Chrome sale coming to pass.
The site first started offering this action earlier this week, and early bets predicted only a little under a 15% chance of Google being forced to get rid of Chrome, either in part or completely. But after last night’s news, a flurry of new wagers has already started moving that needle, and after briefly peaking as high as 40%, bets have now settled down to about a 30% probability that the sale happens. That could easily shift, as this news is still quite fresh, and there’s already a fair amount of volatility in recent bets, so we’ll be curious to see how this speculation evolves.
Polymarket recently found itself in headlines after the odds on the site showed Donald Trump the favored winner in this month’s US presidential election — a prediction that would prove prescient. Despite being an American company, the site does not accept bets from US users. Transactions are conducted using the USD Coin cryptocurrency.
