Judge: Google can keep Chrome, must share search data with “qualified competitors”

Google has avoided the worst-case scenario in the pivotal search antitrust case brought by the US Department of Justice. More than a year ago, the Department of Justice (DOJ) secured a major victory when Google was found to have violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The remedy phase took place earlier this year, with the DOJ calling for Google to divest the market-leading Chrome browser, release data to competitors, and end many of its search distribution deals.

The government is getting almost none of that. DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta has ruled that Google doesn’t have to give up the Chrome browser to mitigate its illegal monopoly in online search. The court will only require a handful of modest data and behavioral remedies, forcing Google to release some search data to competitors and limit its ability to make exclusive distribution deals.

Chrome remains with Google

This case drew many comparisons to the decades-old antitrust case against Microsoft, which nearly saw the company split in two. The company narrowly avoided that fate, and it seems Google will as well—the DOJ came up short on the so-called structural remedies. While there will be some changes to search distribution, the court didn’t believe that a breakup was fair in this situation.

The government contended that Google’s dominance in Chrome was key to its search lock-in. Multiple experts testified in the trial about the impact of defaults—most people don’t change settings and will simply use whatever the search engine is included with their browser. Google claimed people use its search engine because it’s the best, and besides, no other company could hope to operate Chrome and Chromium like it does.

Other tech firms began drooling over the prospect of owning Chrome almost immediately. Perplexity even made an unsolicited offer of $34.5 billion for the browser, a sum that probably vastly undervalues the asset. Perplexity and the others can keep their money because there’s essentially zero chance Google entertains any offers going forward.

The ruling acknowledges that Chrome’s market position does contribute to Google’s search dominance, but full divestiture can often have unintended consequences. Mehta decided that Google’s use of Chrome as a vehicle for search is not sufficiently linked to anticompetitive conduct to justify forcing a sale. “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture (sic) of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints,” the ruling reads.

Google won’t have to give up Chrome, but it does have to share search data.

Credit: Aurich Lawson

This is undeniably a big win for Google. The company has issued a statement that reads as cautiously optimistic. “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,” writes Google’s Lee-Anne Mulholland. “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.”

Data remedies have some teeth

While Google has escaped a breakup, the court does intend to impose some behavioral and data remedies. The DOJ isn’t getting everything it asked for here, but some of these changes could give Google’s competitors a boost.

Under the court’s ruling, Google will still be permitted to pay for search placement—those multi-billion-dollar arrangements with Apple and Mozilla can continue. However, Google cannot require any of its partners to distribute Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or Gemini. That means Google cannot, for example, make access to the Play Store contingent on bundling its other apps on phones.

DuckDuckGo founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg has criticized these restrictions as insufficient to address Google’s monopoly. “We do not believe the remedies ordered by the court will force the changes necessary to adequately address Google’s illegal behavior,” says Weinberg. “Google will still be allowed to continue to use its monopoly to hold back competitors, including in AI search. As a result, consumers will continue to suffer. We believe Congress should now step in to swiftly make Google do the thing it fears the most: compete on a level playing field.”

Part of the reason the DOJ sought to rope in Chrome was that it gives Google a seemingly insurmountable lead in user and search data, which is essential for building a competing product. Witnesses in the case explained that competing search products suffer from the “80-20 problem.” It’s relatively easy to build a search product that can answer 80 percent of queries, but that last 20 percent is tough. These “long tail” searches are where Google’s scale helps it stay ahead of others.

The government asked for mandatory data sharing to help other companies make progress on that last 20 percent. Mehta agrees that making Google share some search data can address its anticompetitive conduct, but again, he narrowed the scope. Google will have to share user interaction data from its GLUE and RankEmbed models with “qualified competitors” at least twice. However, it won’t have to share generative AI model training data or provide ongoing access to the allowed data sets.

Alternative search engines may get a boost from the ruling’s data-sharing provisions, which include metrics and syndicated results.

Credit: Aurich Lawson

Google’s search index will also be opened up to competitors, but not with the terms the DOJ wanted. The index data will include elements like document IDs, URL maps, crawl dates, spam analysis, and more. However, the court declined to make Google provide this data on an ongoing basis. Instead, competitors will be able to access this data once “at or around” the time they are recognized as a qualified competitor. This will give other search engines a boost as they work to catch up to Google.

The government wanted Google to provide access to its search results (i.e., syndication) for a “marginal cost,” the so-called search spin-off that CEO Sundar Pichai feared. But Mehta was persuaded that this could distort the market if handled incorrectly. Brave, which operates one of only two non-Google search indexes, objected to essentially forcing Google to undercut its business. The ruling agreed, noting that there is a market for search indexes. So, Google will have to offer its index at a price similar to others in the market.