A federal judge ordered Google to hand over its search results and data to rival companies in a landmark antitrust case Tuesday, following the court’s ruling that the tech company’s online search business is a monopoly.
District Judge Amit Mehta said that the tech giant cannot have exclusive contracts for its Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant and Gemini app products as part of his proposed remedy to rectify the company’s more than $2 trillion search monopoly. The judge also called on the company to share its search data with “qualified competitors,” which is still only a fraction of the data the Department of Justice wanted the company to share.
“Unlike the typical case where the court’s job is to resolve a dispute based on historic facts, here the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future,” Mehta wrote. “Not exactly a judge’s forte.”
The antitrust case comes as Google’s reach expands with the integration of its AI bot Gemini into their search engine that roughly over 2 billion people use daily.
Metha did not grant all of the restrictions the U.S. government’s demanded from Google. The judge’s ruling did not ban but did place restrictions on how much Google can pay to ensure its search engine is prioritized on smartphones and web browsers. Metha did not pass the government’s request that Google sell its browser Chrome, a move that the DOJ deemed “necessary” to overturn Google’s monopoly of the tech space. Finally, he did not force Google to divest from Android.
“Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divestiture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints,” Mehta wrote in the Tuesday ruling.
The Justice Department wanted the federal court to force Google to break off its Android mobile operating system if the search market doesn’t experience an increase in competition through its sweeping proposed fixes.
Google will likely appeal the case, keeping it in limbo for potentially several years to come. The tech giant did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Mehta’s decision marks the first government monopoly case against a modern tech giant. The decision sets the tone for future antitrust cases against others in the tech space, including Apple, Amazon and Meta.
Google faces another antitrust case in Virginia over their advertising technology. A Virginia federal judge ruled in April that the company has an illegal monopoly over the software that marketers use to place ads on sites on the internet. That remedies hearing will pick back up in September.