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This makes sense, but it is made even more nonsensical by the fact that the DOJ is also separately saying traffic aquisition deals are anticompetitive as well.

Chrome has ads? Or do you just mean any browser that defaults omnibox searches to google.com? a.k.a. firefox, safari, opera, chrome, etc

What ads does Chrome make money from?

Google makes money from ads by having control of Chrome. I don't see how that would continue if it's spun out. I'm not aware of any ads in Chrome itself (but I've been using FF for years, so what do I know). And Chrome controlling the default search engine is exactly why they want it spun out from Google, so if the result was simply that it makes money by defaulting to a different search engine, that would be an absurd, pointless result.

Imagine if Google isn't allowed to pay Chrome Inc for traffic acquisition so Chrome changes the default search engine to Bing and now Bing is a monopoly because 90% of browsers default to Bing.

> that would be an absurd, pointless result.

Not saying it couldn't happen.