A U.S. judge on Friday clarified and finalized the remedies stemming from Google’s antitrust case, detailing the steps the company must take following its loss last year.
In mid-2024, Google was found to hold an illegal monopoly in internet search, and in September, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rejected the Department of Justice’s proposal for the most severe penalties, including a forced sale of Google’s Chrome browser. However, Google was ordered to loosen its control over search data, a mandate that was further defined in Friday’s ruling.
Mehta’s filing outlined specific restrictions on agreements like Google’s multi-billion-dollar deal with Apple, which makes Google the default search engine on Safari across iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Under the new rules, any similar agreements must expire within a year. The ruling also covers arrangements involving generative artificial intelligence products, including any software, applications, or tools that use large language models. “GenAI plays a significant role in these remedies,” Mehta noted.
The judge also set requirements for a technical committee tasked with determining which competitors must receive Google’s data. Committee members must have expertise in software engineering, AI, information retrieval, economics, behavioral science, and data privacy, and cannot have conflicts of interest, such as employment with Google or its competitors, within six months prior to or one year after serving. The committee will have access to Google’s source code and algorithms under confidentiality agreements, and Google must provide certain web index and raw search interaction data used to train its ranking and AI systems, though its proprietary algorithms remain protected.
The ruling builds on Mehta’s August 2024 decision that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, holding a monopoly in search and related advertising. The antitrust trial began in September 2023, and Google has indicated plans to appeal the monopoly finding.