U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled on the remedies for Google being declared a monopoly. In short, Google won't be broken up (will keep Chrome, Android and Ads), it will have to share search data and it is barred from making exclusive search deals.
Many were expecting the remedies to be a lot stricter after a lot of back and forth on this monopoly ruling but it seems Google got away easy with this one.
“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,” the decision stated. “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”
“There are strong reasons not to jolt the system and to allow market forces to do the work,” Mehta wrote.
“Google will not be barred from making payments or offering other consideration to distribution partners for preloading or placement of Google Search, Chrome, or its GenAI products. 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.”
But Google will have to share its search data. Mehta ruled Google will have to make available certain search index data and user interaction data, though “not ads data”. Mehta wrote, "Google will have to make available to Qualified Competitors certain search index and user-interaction data, though not ads data, as such sharing will deny Google the fruits of its exclusionary acts and promote competition. The court, however, has narrowed the datasets Google will be required to share to tailor the remedy to its anticompetitive conduct."
The Judge added, "Google shall offer Qualified Competitors search and search text ads syndication services to enable those firms to deliver high-quality search results and ads to compete with Google while they develop their own search technologies and capacity. Such syndication, however, shall occur largely on ordinary commercial terms that are consistent with Google’s current syndication services. "
Here is the full write up from Judge Mehta as a PDF document. Read pages 3 to 5 or so for the summary. There is a lot of coverage of this on Techmeme.
Here is some of the early reaction:
Sundar and team be like ..... pic.twitter.com/c5YN5tzOBN
— Gagan Ghotra (@gaganghotra_) September 2, 2025
A statement from our CEO on the US v Google remedies:
— DuckDuckGo (@DuckDuckGo) September 2, 2025
"We do not believe the remedies ordered by the court will force the changes necessary to adequately address Google’s illegal behavior. Google will still be allowed to continue to use its monopoly to hold back competitors,…
lol at those who were expecting the judge would break google and make the internet a better place
— Mayank Parmar (@mayank_jee) September 2, 2025
Google to keep Chrome. That's huge. https://t.co/8gNgujLW9b
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 2, 2025
And the Google fan club too. https://t.co/cGcJm97nAU
— Dan (@Okayy_Dan) September 2, 2025
In rejecting Google critics' fantastical remedies, his ruling today cited the MSFT precedent nine different times: Remedies must be “tailored to fit the wrong creating the occasion for the remedy.” pic.twitter.com/aMYgHu9RFE
— Adam Kovacevich (@adamkovac) September 2, 2025
On Google, @SenAmyKlobuchar tells me she and her staff are still looking at the remedies decision that will allow the company to keep owning Chrome but says “it is a sign of why we need legislation that would make it all clear.”
— Ben Brody (@BenBrodyDC) September 2, 2025
I guess Perplexity isn’t going to own Chrome, after all. pic.twitter.com/9kOjiT8xG6
— Eric Seufert (@eric_seufert) September 2, 2025
Good news for big tech, the regulator’s bark is bigger than the bite.$GOOG up 8% on the ruling that it can keep Chrome. $AAPL up 3% on the fact it can keep the Google default search deal (15% of Apple’s operating income).
— Gene Munster (@munster_gene) September 2, 2025
Apple also gets a nice win because the ruling forces…
The one upside here is that Trump may not get involved, because there's nothing for him to trade away. Google got what it wanted.
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) September 2, 2025
Now I’m nowhere anything close to a lawyer, but it feels insane to my tiny brain that something could be ruled a monopoly, meaning remedies are to follow, and then nothing of real impact actually comes of the proposed solutions. https://t.co/RqfcvY9Qes
— julia alexander (@loudmouthjulia) September 2, 2025
Wow - court rules Google must share data with competitors. Looks like they'll be forced to share:
— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) September 2, 2025
1) Basic Search Index: URLs/first seen/last crawled/spam score/etc.
2) "Glue": uses click data to build SERPs
3) RankEmbed: deep learning to understand semantic meaning
Bing,… pic.twitter.com/6BtkyNSqPE
Forum discussion at X.
Update: Google posted its statement expressing concern over sharing search data. Google wrote:
Earlier today a U.S. court overseeing the Department of Justice’s lawsuit over how we distribute Search issued a decision on next steps.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. This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want. That’s why we disagree so strongly with the Court’s initial decision in August 2024 on liability.
Now the Court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google services, and will require us to share Search data with rivals. We have concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely. The Court did recognize that divesting Chrome and Android would have gone beyond the case’s focus on search distribution, and would have harmed consumers and our partners.
As always, we’re continuing to focus on what matters — building innovative products that people choose and love.
