Google will not be forced to dismantle the search operation, but a federal judge has tried other changes to Tech Giant’s business practices to keep it from further antithetical behavior.
Judge of the US District Court, Amit P. Mehta, described the corrective measures on Tuesday that it would prevent Google from entering or maintaining exclusive search distribution agreements, Chrome, Google Assistant or Gemini to other applications or revenue arrangements. For example, Google would not be able to compose the Play Store licensing for distributing certain applications or link revenue payments to maintain certain applications.
Google will also have to share some of the user search and interaction data with “specialized competitors” to avoid exclusion behavior and must provide search advertising services to standardized prices so that they can provide quality results while creating their own technology.
Mehta has not yet issued a final crisis. Instead, he ordered the Google and the Ministry of Justice to “meet and give” and submit a revised final crisis until September 10, which is aligned with his opinion.
Behavioral therapies come a year after Mehta’s avoidance that Google illegally acted to maintain a monopoly on electronic search. A technical committee will be set up to help enforce the final crisis, which will last six years and will take effect 60 days after entering.
DOJ, which filed its antitrust suit against Google in 2020, had supported stronger sanctions. He wanted to force Google to assign the Chrome browser and possibly Android, which has led to some adverse acquisition offers and to terminate its agreements with Apple, Samsung and other partners in which the technological giant paid for these billions of companies to make their search engine tissue browsing.
Apple’s stock fell on the news for hours that it could continue its profitable deal with Google. Google spent more than $ 26 billion in 2021 only to ensure default search positions on devices and approximately $ 18 billion From these costs it went exclusively to Apple, with which Google shares 36% of the Safari search advertising revenue. Next year Google paid Apple more than $20 billionin accordance with the terms of the distribution agreement.
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During the trial, the judge emphasized that, because most users remain with the default, these placements are “extremely valuable real estate” that essentially locked their opponents and knee their ability to challenge Google’s monopoly.
Doj also called on Judge Mehta to force Google to share the search index, the data on the part of the user, the synthetic questions and advertising data with competitors in accordance with the terms protected by privacy.
Google, which has maintained about 90% market share in the traditional search market for the last decade, argued that government proposals will stifle innovation, endanger the privacy of users and underestimated the company’s ability to invest in R&D. forced data distribution would act as “de facto divestment“To search google.
During the hearing of corrective measures in April, Judge Mehta suggested that he would consider Europe’s digital markets acting as a reference point. DMA requires Google to share specific clicks and questions with third parties. Mehta’s mandate, on the other hand, is narrower and temporary, as opposed to DMA’s ongoing obligations. It is also much more limited than the sweeping access requested by DOJ, which may have included a source code, full search algorithms and wider infrastructure elements, which Google said it would essentially give its whole intellectual property.
“This has inspired a great debate as to whether Europeans with the Digital Market Law are right,” said William Kovacic, a global law on competition at George Washington University and former Commissioner of the Federal Committee on Trade. “That is, do you need descriptive rules, or are you based on the technical case on a case -by -case basis?”
In another way: “Does the European experience tell us something about feasibility and application here. Does it tell us something about what Google can live?”
The same question about how regulators should reshape the Google business will also be large in other antitrust battles of technology.
Judge Mehta’s decision may also affect the outcome of a separate antitrust test that Google is currently dealing with in relation to its advertising technological activities. In April 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema found that Google illegally monopolized advertising technology markets. The corrective action test is scheduled for late September and will focus on the proposed assignments and other measures of the Doj.
“We have never had an occasion in which the Ministry of Justice had two largely parallel cases involving significant evidence of alleged abuse against the same sovereign operation with two parallel proceedings proceedings,” Kovacic said.
Kovacic added that although Mehta released its long -awaited treatments, “there are many acts in this game to go” in the form of Google’s appeal and the possible escalation in the Supreme Court. “It will not end until the end of 2027 or early 2028,” he said.
This story is developing. Check again for updates.
