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.
After Mehta ruled that Google took illegal action to maintain a monopoly in online searches, behavioral therapy comes a year later. 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.
Submitted by the Ministry of Justice 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.
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.
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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.
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 have two cases that have largely paralleled in the Justice Department, involving major misconduct against the same dominant company and two parallel remedial procedures,” William Kovacic, a professor of global competition law at George Washington University and a former Federal Trade Commissioner told TechCrunch.
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.
