A federal judge on Tuesday declined to impose the most severe penalties in the landmark antitrust case that found Google guilty of illegally monopolizing the internet search market.
The decision marks a dramatic turn in a trial that began in September 2023 and culminated in August 2024, when the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act. While the ruling confirmed that Google abused its dominance in search and search advertising, the remedies judgment delivered by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta offered the company a lifeline.
Alphabet shares jumped 8% in extended trading on Tuesday following the ruling.
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No Forced Breakup of Chrome or Android
The Department of Justice had sought sweeping remedies, including the divestiture of Google’s Chrome browser and potentially even its Android operating system — both viewed as central to Google’s data and advertising power. But Judge Mehta rejected those measures, calling them overreach.
“Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment,” he wrote. “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divestiture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”
Instead, the court ordered narrower remedies: Google must scale back exclusive contracts that guaranteed its search engine’s default status, stop “compelled syndication” deals designed to freeze rivals out, and share portions of its search index and user interaction data with competitors. Ads data, however, will remain off-limits.
Mehta ordered both parties to meet by Sept. 10 for the final judgment.
Limited Penalties, But New Rules
The ruling still imposes restrictions on Google’s business practices. Google can continue making payments to partners — including Apple, which receives billions annually to keep Google Search as the iPhone’s default — but it can no longer condition those payments on exclusivity.
“Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial—in some cases, crippling—downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban,” Mehta wrote.
The Department of Justice hailed the outcome as a partial victory.
“The court’s ruling today recognizes the need for remedies that will pry open the market for general search services, which has been frozen in place for over a decade,” the DOJ said. “The ruling also recognizes the need to prevent Google from using the same anticompetitive tactics for its GenAI products as it used to monopolize the search market.”
Apple stock rose 4% in after-hours trading following the ruling.
AI as a Game-Changer
Perhaps the most striking element of Mehta’s 226-page ruling was the weight he placed on artificial intelligence. He devoted nearly 30 pages to explaining the generative AI market, describing it as “highly competitive” with “numerous new market entrants” and “a lot of capital.”
Mehta wrote that the rise of AI fundamentally altered the remedies debate. “The emergence of GenAI changed the course of this case,” he said. While Google remains dominant in search, generative AI has introduced new dynamics that prevent a simple replay of past monopolistic tactics.
“Google cannot use the same anticompetitive playbook for its GenAI products that it used for Search,” Mehta said.
Generative AI startups were repeatedly referenced in the ruling: OpenAI appeared 30 times, Anthropic six, and Perplexity 24. The court noted that when the case was first filed, companies like Anthropic (founded in 2021) and Perplexity (founded in 2022) did not even exist. By contrast, OpenAI was still a niche lab before its ChatGPT launch in late 2022 ignited the AI boom. ChatGPT alone was mentioned 28 times in the ruling.
“Today, tens of millions of people use GenAI chatbots, like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, to gather information that they previously sought through internet search,” the filing stated.
Other rivals mentioned include Elon Musk’s xAI, DuckDuckGo’s Duck.ai, Meta, and China’s DeepSeek.
Google and DOJ Responses
Google expressed mixed feelings in a blog post. “Now the Court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google services, and will require us to share Search data with rivals,” the company said. “We have concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely.”
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, emphasized how much the industry had changed.
“Today’s decision recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information.”
The DOJ, however, stressed the decision’s significance for both present and future markets.
“The remedies will reach GenAI technologies and companies,” it said, underscoring the government’s intent to keep Google’s dominance in check as AI reshapes the competitive landscape.
For all the legal fireworks, the case has also become a referendum on the next era of technology. Nearly a year after Google’s monopoly was first declared, it is the rise of generative AI — not the breakup of Chrome or Android — that may ultimately prove to be the company’s biggest challenge.