Google will have to share data with rivals and will not be allowed to enter into any exclusive contracts, according to a new decision from a U.S. district judge. However, the search giant will not be forced to sell its Chrome browser.
PhocusWire has reached out to Google. In a post on X in May, the company said it would wait for the court's opinion and eventually appeal a ruling.
As reported by The Associated Press, Reuters and other publications, the decision arrives just over a year after U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google had created a monopoly over search in a landmark decision. The ruling followed years of complaints from travel industry leaders and other players and an ongoing lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2020.
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“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 states, according to CNBC. “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”
While Google will be able to keep Chrome, Mehta added restrictions on the payments Google makes for default browser placement on smartphones. The company can carry on with its payments but is no longer allowed to sign exclusive contracts.
“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,” the decision reads, according to CNBC. “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.”
Google will also have to make some search index data and user interaction data available to its competitors, but this excludes “ads data,” according to CNBC. The data Google will have to share includes sets from “ordinary commercial terms that are consistent with Google’s current syndication services.”
The decision also comes as search is undergoing a massive transformation amid AI and weeks after AI engine Perplexity made a bid to purchase Google Chrome for $34.5 billion.
Mehta said in his decision that the emergence of generative AI has changed the course of the case, with recent testimony citing the technology as a “nascent competitive threat,” according to Barron’s.