Google will not be forced to break its search business, but a federal judge temporarily ordered other changes to the business practices of the technology giant to prevent further anti-competitive behavior.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta outlined the remedy Tuesday that would prohibit Google from entering or maintaining exclusive deals that would assign searches, Chrome, Google Assistant or Gemini to other apps or revenue arrangements. For example, Google will not be able to play store licenses on distributions of certain apps, or pay for revenue to retain certain apps.
Google also has to share certain search indexes and user communication data with “qualified competitors” to prevent exclusive behavior and must provide competitors with search and search advertising joint services at standard rates so that they can deliver high-quality results while building their own technology.
Mehta has not issued a final verdict. Instead, he ordered Google and the Justice Department to “meet and grant” and file a revised final judgment by September 10 to be consistent with his opinion.
Behavioral therapy is one year later Mehta ruled Google to act illegally Maintain monopoly in online search. A technical committee will be established to help implement the final judgment, which will last for six years and will take effect 60 days after entry.
The Ministry of Justice submitted Antitrust lawsuit against Google against Google in 2020promote stronger punishment. It hopes to force Google to strip its Chrome browser and Android, which leads to some Unsolicited Acquisition Bidand ended agreements with Apple, Samsung and other partners, in which the tech giant paid billions of dollars in search engines to make its search engine the default choice on its devices and web browsers.
Apple stock pops up after get off work, i.e. it can continue to agree with Google, i.e. it can continue to be profitable, if no longer exclusive. Google spent over $26 billion in 2021 alone to ensure default search locations on devices and around $18 billion The spending is only made available to Apple, with Google sharing 36% of its search ad revenue with Safari. The following year, Google paid more than $$ to Apple20 billionin accordance with the terms of its distribution agreement.
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During the trial, the judge stressed that as most users insisted on the default, these positions were “extremely valuable real estate,” effectively locking competitors out and knee-locking their ability to challenge Google’s monopoly.
The Justice Department also called on Judge Mehta to force Google to share its search index, user-side data, synthetic query and advertising data and conduct it with competitors under privacy-protected terms.
Over the past decade, Google has a market share of about 90% in the traditional search market, and he believes government advice will kill innovation, endanger user privacy and undermine companies’ ability to invest in R&D. CEO Sundar Pichai said at a remedial hearing in April that forced data sharing will act as “De facto stripping“Used to Google Search.
At a remedy hearing in April, Justice Meta suggested that he view Europe’s digital market as a point of reference. DMA requires Google to share certain click and query data with third parties. By contrast, Mehta’s command is different from the ongoing obligations of DMA. Its limitations are also more limited than the access required by DOJ, which may include source code, a complete search ranking algorithm and a wider infrastructure element, which Google has said will essentially give away its entire intellectual property.
“This inspired a debate about whether Europeans are right with Europeans who are right with the Digital Markets Act,” said George Washington University’s Global Competition Law professor and a former Federal Trade Commission Commission to TechCrunch. “That is, do you need descriptive rules, or do you rely on case rulings to rely on technical cases?”
In other words: “Is the European experience here telling us about feasibility and implementation. Does it tell us something about what Google can tolerate?”
Questions about how far regulators should go in reshaping Google’s business will also cause huge harm in the technology giant’s other antitrust battles.
Judge Mehta’s decision may also affect the results of Google’s current separate antitrust trials related to its advertising technology business. In April 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema discovered Google’s illegal monopoly on advertising technology market. The remedial trial is scheduled to take place in late September and will focus on the proposed divestitures and other measures by the Justice Department.
“We never had two cases that were largely parallel to the Justice Department, involving major misconduct against the same leading company, and conducted two parallel remedial processes,” Kovacic said.
Kovacic added that even though Mehta released his much-anticipated remedy, “there is a lot of action to go on in this scene” with Google’s appeal and potential escalation to the Supreme Court. “It won’t end until the second half of 2027 or early 2028,” he said.
This story is developing. Go back to check the updates.
