Google is mounting a fierce defense in court to prevent sweeping restrictions that could limit its dominance in search and curb its expansion into artificial intelligence.
The company, already found guilty of monopolizing the search market, is now fighting to ensure new court-ordered remedies do not undermine its efforts to integrate its Gemini AI app with other Google services such as YouTube and Maps.
At a hearing in Washington on Wednesday, Google attorney John Schmidtlein urged U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta not to impose restrictions that would prevent the company from bundling Gemini with its most popular apps. Schmidtlein argued that the court should treat AI differently from search, warning that overly broad remedies could stifle innovation in an emerging market.
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“Maps and YouTube aren’t monopoly products,” he told the court. “There’s no notion that Google has to date gained monopoly or market power” in AI.
Judge Mehta, however, expressed skepticism, pointing out that requiring device manufacturers to install Gemini as a condition for accessing YouTube and Maps could give Google undue leverage—similar to the tactics that once allowed it to dominate search distribution channels.
“That leverage,” Mehta said, “could recreate the same kind of dominance we are trying to correct.”
The hearing is part of the remedies phase of a landmark antitrust case in which Mehta ruled last year that Google unlawfully maintained its monopoly in online search. The Justice Department had accused the company of using exclusionary contracts with device makers, browser vendors, and carriers to make Google the default search engine on billions of devices. Those deals, the DOJ argued, shut out rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing and DuckDuckGo by denying them crucial distribution channels.
In his ruling, Mehta agreed with the DOJ, concluding that Google’s dominance was preserved not by superior products but by restrictive agreements that made competition nearly impossible. The case, filed under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, became the most significant U.S. antitrust challenge since the government’s action against Microsoft in the late 1990s.
Now, with the court preparing its final order on remedies, the Justice Department is pushing for broad measures to restore competition. These include ending Google’s exclusive distribution agreements, forcing it to share parts of its search index and user-interaction data with competitors, and requiring it to open up its search advertising services to other firms. The DOJ has also proposed barring Google from tying or conditioning the use of one of its services—like Search, Chrome, or Assistant—to access to another, such as Gemini or Maps.
More controversially, the government has suggested potential structural remedies if behavioral ones prove insufficient, including the divestiture of Google’s Chrome browser or portions of its Android operations. Justice Department lawyers argue that breaking up parts of Google may be the only way to ensure lasting competition in digital search and advertising.
Google has strongly opposed those ideas. The company insists that such drastic remedies would “hold back American innovation at a critical juncture,” especially as it seeks to expand its investments in AI. Executives argue that forcing data-sharing or unbundling could amount to a “de facto divestiture” that would weaken incentives for product improvement and research. They also maintain that Gemini’s integration into its services is comparable to Microsoft’s use of CoPilot in its Office products—a natural evolution of its technology rather than a monopolistic maneuver.
In September, Mehta declined to force Google to divest Chrome or Android, rejecting the DOJ’s most aggressive proposals. However, he did impose a series of behavioral and structural constraints aimed at preventing Google from repeating its past conduct. These include banning exclusive contracts involving Search, Chrome, Assistant, or Gemini; mandating data-sharing arrangements to allow rival search engines to compete; and prohibiting Google from tying the licensing of one product to the distribution of another.
In issuing the remedies, Mehta acknowledged the challenge of regulating in the age of generative AI, describing the task as “looking into a crystal ball and trying to predict the future.” The judge noted that while the court’s goal is to restore competition, it must avoid stifling technological progress in an emerging industry.
For Google, the battle is about more than legal compliance—it is about survival in its current form. The company is fighting to remain whole and to preserve its ability to innovate across its ecosystem. Its legal team has positioned AI as a separate market that should not be constrained by remedies designed for search. The company is also seeking to delay or soften some of the new behavioral restrictions through appeals and ongoing negotiations.
The Justice Department, however, views Google’s arguments as part of a broader strategy to maintain dominance under the guise of innovation. Officials have warned that without strict limits, Google could replicate its monopoly power in the AI market, using its vast distribution network to push Gemini ahead of competitors.