While Google will not be forced to dissolve its search business, federal judges have tentatively ordered other changes to Tech Giant's business practices, preventing further anti-competitive action.
US District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta on Tuesday outlined a remedy that prohibits Google from entering or maintaining exclusive transactions that links the distribution of searches, Chrome, Google Assistant, or Gemini to other apps or revenue arrangements. For example, Google cannot condition a PlayStore license for the distribution of a particular app or tie up revenue share payments to maintain a particular app.
Google must share certain search indexes and user interaction data with “qualified competitors” to prevent exclusive behavior. You also need to provide search and search ad syndication services to your competitors at standard rates so that you can deliver quality results while building your own technology.
Mehta has not announced its final verdict yet. Instead, he ordered Google and the Justice Department to “meet and award” and submitted a revised final decision by September 10th.
The action remedy comes a year after Mehta ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain its monopoly in online searches. A technical committee will be established to assist in the implementation of the final decision. The final ruling lasts for six years and will come into effect 60 days after entry.
The DOJ, which submitted the Antimonopoly Act to Google in 2020, advocated stronger penalties. They wanted to force Google to sell their Chrome browser and possibly Android, which meant they had some unsolicited purchase bids, and the Apple, Samsung and Tech giants wanted to end contracts with other partners that would pay billions of dollars to these companies and bring search engines to the default choice for devices and web browsers.
Apple Stock went out outside of business hours after news that it could continue its favorable agreement with Google. Google spent over $26 billion on its own in 2021 to secure default search placements for devices, spending around $18 billion on Apple alone, and Google shares 36% of its search ad revenue from Safari. The following year, Google paid Apple over $20 billion, subject to the terms of its distribution agreement.
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During the trial, the judges emphasized that these placements are “very valuable real estate” as most users stick to defaults, effectively locking out their rivals and tying their ability to challenge Google's monopoly in their knees.
The DOJ also asked Judge Mehta to force Google to share search indexes, user-side data, synthetic queries and ADS data with competitors under privacy conditions.
Having maintained a market share of around 90% in the traditional search market for the past decade, Google claims that government proposals will curb innovation, put user privacy at risk and undermine the company's ability to invest in R&D. CEO Sundar Pichai said at Remedies Hearding in April that Data Sharing would serve as a “de facto sale” for Google search.
During the relief hearing in April, Judge Meta proposed to believe that the European digital market would serve as a reference point. DMA requires Google to share certain click and query data with third parties. In contrast, Mehta's orders are narrower and more temporary, unlike the continued duties of the DMA. It is also much more restrictive than the sweep access requested by the DOJ. This includes source code, full search ranking algorithms, and broader infrastructure elements Google said essentially provides the entire intellectual property.
“This has influenced a major debate about whether or not the Europeans of digital market law have it right,” Kovasic said. “So do you need descriptive rules, or do you rely on technical cases for each case arbitration?”
Put another way, “Does the European experience tell us anything about feasibility and implementation here? Can we tell us anything about what Google can live with?”
The same question about how far regulators need to go by restructuring Google's business is also delved into the other antitrust laws of Tech Giant.
Judge Mehta's decision could affect the results of another antitrust trial that Google is currently involved in in connection with its ad technology business. In April 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema discovered that Google had illegally dominated the ad tech market. The relief trial is scheduled for late September and will focus on the sale and other measures proposed by the DOJ.
“There has never been a situation where the Department of Justice has had two major parallel cases that include key elements of suspected fraud against the same dominant corporation,” said William Kovasic, professor of global competition law at George Washington University and former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.
Kovacic added that “the play has a lot to do” in the form of Google's appeal and a potential escalation to the Supreme Court, despite Mehta's release of his highly anticipated remedy. “It won't end until late 2027 or early 2028,” he said.
This story is developing. Please check for updates.