Google dodged the wildest possible outcome in its landmark antitrust battle, but a federal judge has hit the company with sweeping behavioral remedies that force it to open up the default search pipeline and limit the way it stitches its services together. The decision bars Google from entering into exclusive distribution deals and requires it to share some of the data that rivals need to juice their chances at actually getting distribution and becoming relevant, without unraveling Google’s core search-monopoly business.
What the order does and does not do
Amit P. Mehta of United States District Court dictated terms that bar Google from striking or maintaining contracts that condition the use of Search, Chrome, Google Assistant or a phone maker’s app store on its bundling of digital products, and from entering revenue-sharing deals that cover market competitors. In practice, that would mean no more tying Play Store licensing to the preinstallation of certain apps, and no paying partners to ensure Google services are the only default installed.
Google also has to allow “qualified” competitors access on fair-terms to certain “portions” of the left-hand-side of search results, its indexing and the data that its collects about how its users interact with the internet — subject to user privacy protections. The company is also obligated to provide syndication of search and search-ads at fair market rates so that rivals can serve their own competitive offerings while developing their technology stacks.
The court is pressing the parties to hammer out a judgment that complies soon. A technical committee will verify compliance, and the order will last for six years, once it takes effect. It’s a textbook conduct-based remedy: no structural break up, but strict limitations on how Google can use its scale.
End of the default lock-ups
Default search placements on browsers and smartphones were at the heart of much of the case the Justice Department built, it argued that the vast majority of users do not switch and that default is “extremely valuable real estate.” Court records indicated that in a single recent year, Google paid more than $26 billion to ensure that such slots appeared by default on devices and browsers. Several billion dollars of that found its way to one partner: A revenue share of roughly 36 percent that the companies attributed to traffic from a major browser’s default search bar. In another recent year, payments to that partner amounted to more than $20 billion, further illustrating how integral these deals have been in sustaining share.
Those arrangements won’t go away completely, but they can no longer be monogamous. That alone could reset the starting line for competitors including Microsoft’s Bing, privacy-focused players like DuckDuckGo and newer, AI-focused entrants hoping to be just as easily summoned as Google when a user unboxes a phone or opens a browser.
Data-sharing, without giving away the crown jewels
The most fraught battle had to do with data access. The DOJ requested broad sharing of index data, click signals, synthetic queries and even facets of ranking systems. Google fought back with great force, and its chief executive, Sundar Pichai, testified in court that broad data demands would effectively be a “de facto divestiture” of Search.
Judge Mehta settled on a more narrow middle ground. The order mandates that Google disclose categories of search index and performance data to contender services, and that it offer syndication of ads among rival search companies on fair terms. Importantly, he cited Europe’s Digital Markets Act as a model — where Google has to share certain click and query data — but he didn’t apply open-ended, DMA-style obligations. That is, the remedy seeks to bring contestability back rather than require Google to publish its source code, or the full workings of its ranking systems.
What it means for competitors and users
Destiny can be distribution in consumer search. If device manufacturers serve true choice screens and partners aren’t being paid to promote locked in alternatives, regardless of competitors’ quality, they have the runway to learn from more queries, promote more relevant search results and improve their quality. Realized access to syndication of standardization and index data makes it cheaper for challengers to enter the market, which might mean new players will innovate more quickly around vertical search, privacy features and AI-assisted answers.
For users, the near-term differences may seem subtle — more visible prompts for choice on which search provider to use, slightly different non-Google defaults on devices and perhaps better results from non-Google options. If over time others are able to compound those increments into the relevance and ad yield that matches or exceeds Google’s, the result could be better search options, stronger privacy protection and possibly lower ad prices for advertisers oneself as much as possible have to compete for advertiser budgets.”
Still, Google remains enormously advantaged. Long-running estimates of Google’s share of the traditional web search market from companies like StatCounter and Similarweb have tended to find that it has accounted for roughly 90 percent of all searches for the past several years. Even in the absence of exclusive deals, moats of scale in data, advertiser demand, and product integration are not insubstantial.
Why this is not a breakup — and what comes next
The DOJ initially proposed heavier remedy, which included jettisoning Chrome and unwinding portions of Android distribution. Instead, the court went for so-called conduct rules – probably because it is worried about workability, consumer dislocations, and the dangers of over-correcting in a rapidly evolving AI world.
Next, Google and the DOJ must translate the opinion into a comprehensive final judgment. A court-appointed technical committee will monitor compliance for the next six years, and enforcement could ratchet up if Google is believed to be violating the spirit of the order.
There are ripple effects beyond search. In another instance, a federal judge in the same court had ruled previously that Google illegally cornered the market for ad tech with a remedies phase looming. Former FTC chair William Kovacic has remarked upon the bizarre case of two concurrent remedy tracks aimed at the same dominant firm—one driving the other as the courts’ own adjustment mechanism for how far to “remedy” the reshaping of a platform business’ model.
Appeals are all but certain, and the end game could be in the Supreme Court. For now, the message is simple: the court will not break apart Google, but it will force open the gates that blocked rivals from the most valuable entry points in consumer search.
