A federal judge on Tuesday ordered significant changes to Google’s search engine operations in an effort to curb the tech giant’s monopoly power, while rejecting the U.S. government’s attempt to break up the company.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., issued a 226-page ruling that targets Google’s competitive practices without dismantling its core business. The decision comes amid the rapid rise of artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, which are reshaping how people search for information online and challenging Google’s long-held dominance.
“Unlike the typical case where the court resolves 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.
The judge’s order will prohibit some Google tactics that have driven traffic to its search engine, Gemini AI app, Play Store for Android, and virtual assistant, including certain exclusive agreements that give Google a dominant position on devices. However, Mehta allowed the multi-billion-dollar deals that make Google the default search engine on smartphones, computers, and other devices to continue, concluding that banning them could do more harm than good. Those contracts, which exceed $26 billion annually, were central to the Justice Department’s case that Google operates as an illegal monopoly.
Mehta also rejected the government’s push to force Google to sell its Chrome browser, calling a divestiture “incredibly messy and highly risky.”
Instead, the ruling focuses on providing rivals such as DuckDuckGo and Bing access to Google’s search data — the “secret sauce” built from trillions of queries that give the company an edge in search quality. Google argued that sharing this data would raise privacy and security risks, but the judge decided that controlled access would best promote competition.
The Justice Department called the decision a “major win for the American people,” even though it did not achieve all its goals. Gail Slater, the department’s antitrust chief, said the agency is still evaluating whether the ordered remedies go far enough.
Google framed the ruling as recognition of its argument that the case should not have been filed. “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,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s VP of regulatory affairs, said in a statement. The company has already said it will appeal the earlier monopoly findings that prompted Tuesday’s ruling.
Economists and activists, however, criticized the ruling as too lenient. “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.
Investors responded positively, interpreting the decision as a mild sanction. Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, saw its stock rise more than 7% in after-hours trading, potentially adding nearly $200 billion to its market value.
The continuation of default search agreements also benefits companies like Apple, which receives more than $20 billion annually from Google for pre-installation deals. Apple argued that banning the contracts would cut funding for its own research and could inadvertently strengthen Google’s position, as many users would continue choosing its search engine anyway. Other partners, such as Firefox, warned that losing revenue from Google contracts could threaten their survival. Apple’s shares rose 3% after the ruling.
Mehta stopped short of ordering a Chrome divestiture, noting insufficient evidence that the browser was essential to Google’s search monopoly. For context, Perplexity had reportedly made an unsolicited $34.5 billion offer to acquire Chrome, and OpenAI executives indicated they would also be interested in buying the browser.
The ruling limits the scope of data sharing, granting competitors access to Google’s search index and query histories in a controlled way. The goal is to foster competition without destabilizing Google’s broader operations.
Meanwhile, Google faces another antitrust challenge. The Justice Department is pursuing a separate case targeting Google’s digital advertising network, which was partially ruled an illegal monopoly earlier this year in Virginia. A trial on a proposed breakup of that business is scheduled to begin later this month.
Mehta’s ruling reflects the challenge courts face in regulating major tech companies during an era of rapid AI-driven innovation. It balances limiting anti-competitive practices with preserving the functioning of one of the world’s most widely used search engines — a compromise that will likely shape the future of search, AI, and online advertising for years to come.