A federal judge has ordered changes to how Google operates its search engine, aiming to address what the court determined is an illegal monopoly. The ruling comes after a lengthy antitrust case brought by the U.S. Justice Department, which began during the Trump administration and continued under President Biden.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta’s 226-page decision prohibits Google from making contracts that give its search engine, Gemini AI app, Play Store for Android, and virtual assistant exclusive positions on smartphones, personal computers, and other devices. However, he did not ban the deals that make Google Search the default option on these devices—arrangements worth over $26 billion annually. The judge argued that prohibiting these deals would likely do more harm than good.
“Unlike the typical case where the court’s job is to resolve a dispute based on historic facts, here the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future. Not exactly a judge’s forte,” Mehta wrote.
Instead of banning default deals outright or requiring Google to sell off major assets such as its Chrome browser—which Judge Mehta said “would be incredibly messy and highly risky”—the decision focuses on opening up access for competitors. The order requires Google to provide current and potential rivals with some of its valuable search data accumulated from trillions of queries. This move aims to help competitors like DuckDuckGo and Bing improve their own search results but stops short of giving them unlimited access.
The Justice Department’s antitrust chief, Gail Slater, called the decision “a major win for the American people,” though she noted that officials are still considering whether further action is necessary. “We are now weighing our options and thinking through whether the ordered relief goes far enough,” Slater wrote in a post.
Google responded by highlighting how artificial intelligence has changed competition in online search since the case was filed in 2020: “This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want,” wrote Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president of regulatory affairs at Google.
Some critics felt the ruling did not go far enough given Judge Mehta’s earlier finding that Google had maintained an illegal monopoly through multi-billion dollar default search agreements. “You don’t find someone guilty of robbing a bank and then sentence him to writing a thank you note for the loot,” said Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project.
Financial markets appeared to react positively for both Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, whose shares rose over 7% in after-hours trading—potentially adding nearly $200 billion in market value—and Apple Inc., which receives more than $20 billion annually from Google for being its default search provider; Apple shares climbed 3%.
Apple previously told Judge Mehta that losing these payments could affect its investment in innovation and might inadvertently strengthen Google if consumers continued using its search engine regardless of default status. Mozilla’s Firefox browser owners also argued that losing revenue from their deal with Google would threaten their survival.
Although proposals emerged for possible buyers if Chrome were put up for sale—including a $34.5 billion bid from Perplexity and interest from OpenAI—the judge found no evidence requiring divestiture was warranted.
Meanwhile, Google faces additional scrutiny as another antitrust trial targeting its digital advertising business is set to begin later this month following an earlier ruling that parts of Google’s ad technology constitute another illegal monopoly.
