Alphabet Inc’s Google will have to share some of its search data with competitors, but will not have to sell its popular Chrome web browser, a federal judge ruled Tuesday in the Justice Department’s landmark antitrust case against the search engine. — Bloomberg
Alphabet Inc’s Google will have to share some of its search data with competitors, but will not have to sell its popular Chrome web browser, a federal judge ruled Tuesday in the Justice Department’s landmark antitrust case against the search engine.
The ruling allows Google to avoid one of the most severe remedy requests from the US government after the court found the company had an illegal monopoly in the search market. Judge Amit Mehta did bar Google from entering into exclusive contracts for internet search.
The finding follows Mehta’s ruling last year that Google illegally monopolised the markets for online search and search advertisements. Mehta held a three-week hearing in April to determine a fix.
The order is one of the most monumental court decisions affecting the tech sector in more than a quarter century, and could offer a blueprint for other judges who may end up weighing similar choices in cases against Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Apple Inc.
Shares of Alphabet surged as much as 8.7% in extended trading following the release of the judge’s ruling. Apple shares climbed as much as 4.3%.
In another win for Google, the judge didn’t bar the company from making payments to third parties including Apple for default browser placement in browsers or on mobile devices.
"Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial – in some cases, crippling – downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban,” the judge wrote.
Apple favors the Google search engine by giving it the best placement in Safari search bar on computer and mobile devices. Users can opt to switch to Microsoft Corp’s Bing, DuckDuckGo and other options.
For Apple, the ruling maintains the status quo and will allow the iPhone maker to continue receiving payments from Google, which currently amount to more than US$20bil a year.
The iPhone maker gets a much needed reprieve for its services segment, which is already under fire globally from regulators trying to break-up its US$100bil per year App Store business. The judge’s ruling indicates that the default arrangement can continue – with minor adjustments.
Default search engine
These include that Apple will need to better promote alternative search engines and make changes to its default search engine settings annually. The judge also ruled that users must be able to set a different default search engine for privacy mode, an ask that Apple already addressed several months ago.
Under the ruling, which has a duration of six years, Google is required to share limited search data with competitors that could include Microsoft Corp and Duck Duck Go Inc, as well as new AI companies like OpenAI and Perplexity, in order to help them build out competing search engines.
Google and the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Microsoft, DuckDuckGo, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The case against Google was initially filed in the final months of the first Trump administration. After a 10-week trial in 2023 shepherded by then-President Joe Biden’s Justice Department, Mehta sided with the government in August 2024. In his decision, Mehta said that Google illegally dominated the search market by paying more than US$26bil to Apple and other companies to make its search engine the default option on smartphones and web browsers.
"Google’s distribution agreements foreclose a substantial portion of the general search services market and impair rivals’ opportunities to compete,” Mehta wrote in his 286-page liability ruling. By monopolizing distribution on phones and browsers, Google has been able to consistently raise the prices of online advertising without consequences, he said.
Chrome web browser
To address the judge’s findings, the Justice Department proposed that Google be forced to sell its popular Chrome web browser and share some of the data it collects to create its search results. It also asked Mehta to ban Google from paying for search engine defaults – a bar that would also apply to Google’s AI products, including Gemini, which the government says were aided by the company’s illegal monopoly in search.
At the hearing this spring, Google argued that the government’s proposals were too extreme. The company said that the remedies would hurt America’s consumers, economy and position as a world leader in technology. To argue its case, Google called on Alphabet chief executive officer Sundar Pichai; the head of Google Search, Liz Reid, and a vice-president of product at DeepMind, Eli Collins, to testify in court.
Judge Mehta said in his ruling that the government "overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”
The trial also saw a slew of high-profile AI executives take the stand, including OpenAI’s Nick Turley, Perplexity’s Dmitry Shevelenko, and DuckDuckGo’s Gabriel Weinberg. The Justice Department called those witnesses to describe what they called harmful business practices at Google, and how the proposed remedies would break up the monopoly.
Google is facing another possible breakup in second Justice Department case challenging its monopoly over technology used to buy, sell and display advertising around the web. US District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia ruled in favour of the government earlier this year and will hold a hearing in September to determine whether to force the company to sell tools used by websites selling ad space. – Bloomberg
