{"id":1062,"date":"2025-09-02T21:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T21:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.agencywebdesigners.com\/?p=1062"},"modified":"2025-09-04T14:21:27","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T14:21:27","slug":"judge-orders-search-shakeup-in-google-monopoly-case-but-keeps-hands-off-chrome-and-default-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.agencywebdesigners.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/02\/judge-orders-search-shakeup-in-google-monopoly-case-but-keeps-hands-off-chrome-and-default-deals\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge orders search shakeup in Google monopoly case, but keeps hands off Chrome and default deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, Associated Press<\/strong><\/p>\n

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a shake-up of Google\u2019s search engine in an attempt to curb the corrosive power of an illegal monopoly while rebuffing the U.S. government\u2019s attempt to break up the company and impose other restraints.<\/p>\n

The 226-page decision made by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., will likely ripple across the technological landscape at a time when the industry is being reshaped by breakthroughs in artificial intelligence \u2014 including conversational \u201canswer engines\u201d as companies like ChatGPT and Perplexity try to upend Google\u2019s long-held position as the internet\u2019s main gateway.<\/p>\n

The innovations and competition being unleashed by AI also reshaped the judge\u2019s approach to the remedies in the\u00a0nearly five-year-old antitrust case<\/a>\u00a0brought by the U.S. Justice Department during President Donald Trump\u2019s first administration and carried onward by President Joe Biden\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike the typical case where the court\u2019s 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. Not exactly a judge\u2019s forte,\u201d Mehta wrote.<\/p>\n

The judge is trying to rein in Google by prohibiting some of the tactics the company deployed to drive traffic to its search engine and other services. The ruling also will pry open some of the prized databases of closely guarded information about search that have provided Google with a seemingly insurmountable advantage.<\/p>\n

The handcuffs being slapped on Google will preclude contracts that give its search engine, Gemini AI app, Play Store for Android and virtual assistant an exclusive position on smartphone, personal computers and other devices.<\/p>\n

But Mehta stopped short of banning the multi-billion dollar deals that Google has been making for years to lock in its search engine as the default on smartphones, personal computers and other devices. Those deals, involving payments of more than $26 billion annually, were one of the main issues that prompted the judge to conclude Google\u2019s search engine was an illegal monopoly, but he decided banning them in the future would do more harm than good.<\/p>\n

The judge also rejected the U.S. Justice Department\u2019s effort to force Google to sell its popular Chrome browser, concluding it was an unwarranted step that \u201cwould be incredibly messy and highly risky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Partially because he is allowing the default deals to continue, Mehta is ordering Google to give its current and would-be rivals access to some of its search engine\u2019s secret sauce \u2014 the data stockpiled from trillions of queries that it used to help improve the quality of its search results. That is a measure that Google had also fiercely opposed, contending it was unfair and would raise privacy and security risk for the billions of people who have posed questions to its search engine \u2014 sometimes delving into sensitive issues.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department\u2019s antitrust chief, Gail Slater, hailed the decision as a \u201cmajor win for the American people,\u201d even though the agency didn\u2019t get everything it sought. \u201cWe are now weighing our options and thinking through whether the ordered relief goes far enough,\u201d Slater wrote\u00a0in a post.<\/a><\/p>\n

In\u00a0its own post<\/a>, Google framed Mehta\u2019s ruling as a vindication of its long-held position that the case never should have been brought. The decision \u201crecognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information,\u201d wrote Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google\u2019s vice president of regulatory affairs. \u201cThis underlines what we\u2019ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mountain View, California, company has already vowed to appeal the judge\u2019s\u00a0monopoly findings issued 13 months ago<\/a>\u00a0that led to Tuesday\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t find someone guilty of robbing a bank and then sentence him to writing a thank you note for the loot,\u201d said Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project.<\/p>\n