"Chrome isn't going anywhere, and neither are Google's payments to developers of competing browsers to keep its search engine as their default. The ruling that US District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta handed down Tuesday in the Google search-antitrust case gave the plaintiffs-the Department of Justice, joined by 49 states, the District of Columbia, and two US territories-much less than they'd asked for last year after the judge found Google had created an illegal monopoly in search."
"In his 230-page opinion for the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Mehta wrote that he considered remedies for Google's illegal conduct 'with a healthy dose of humility.' He also emphasized his awareness of how AI search engines and chatbots could already be gnawing away at Google's lock on the search market, which Statcounter data for August put at 93% in mobile and 76% on desktops in the US."
"That led Mehta to reject the notion of a forced sale of Chrome, which had already drawn multi-billion-dollar bids from Perplexity and other firms, as 'incredibly messy and highly risky.' He also declined the plaintiff's request to compel a divestiture of Android in five years unless Google could prove that its ownership of that mobile platform was not hurting search competition, writing that this remedy 'does not fit the wrong.'"
US District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta found that Google created an illegal monopoly in search and evaluated remedies cautiously. The ruling denied plaintiffs many requested remedies, rejecting a forced sale of Chrome as "incredibly messy and highly risky." The judge also declined to require Android divestiture within five years unless Google proves platform ownership harms search competition, calling that remedy ill-fitting. The court imposed an exclusivity ban preventing deals that make Google Search, Google Assistant, or Gemini the sole default. The opinion noted rapid generative-AI investment that could erode Google's search dominance.
Read at PCMAG
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