Google is appealing a judge’s search monopoly ruling

Jan 17, 2026 05:36 AM - 4 months ago 118701

Lauren Feiner

is a elder argumentation newsman astatine The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech argumentation astatine CNBC, penning astir antitrust, privacy, and contented moderation reform.

Google is appealing a national court’s determination ruling it an forbidden online hunt monopolist. The institution revenge a announcement to entreaty connected Friday, requesting a region connected the court-ordered remedies meant to reconstruct title to the online hunt market.

“As we person agelong said, the Court’s August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that group usage Google because they want to, not because they’re forced to,” Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said successful a blog post. “The determination grounded to relationship for the accelerated gait of invention and aggravated title we look from established players and well-funded start-ups. And it discounted compelling grounds from browser makers for illustration Apple and Mozilla who said they take to characteristic Google because it provides the highest value hunt acquisition for their consumers.”

Google is asking that remedies that would require it to stock hunt information and syndicate services to rivals beryllium put connected hold, arguing that the measures “would consequence Americans’ privateness and discourage competitors from building their ain products — yet stifling the invention that keeps the U.S. astatine the forefront of world technology.” A region would further hold immoderate action required by Google successful a suit first revenge by the Department of Justice successful October 2020. The DOJ did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

“These are Fortune 500 companies, and they person obscurity other to move different than Google”

DC-based national Judge Amit Mehta ruled successful 2024 that Google maintained an forbidden monopoly complete “general hunt services” and “general hunt matter advertising.” Mehta recovered that Google had anticompetitively deprived rivals of adjacent title by entering exclusionary contracts pinch telephone manufacturers and browsers to make its hunt products the default. The consequence was a durable monopoly whose “partners person concluded that it is financially infeasible to switch” default hunt providers for fearfulness of sacrificing hundreds of millions aliases billions of dollars successful Google-paid gross share, Mehta wrote. “These are Fortune 500 companies, and they person obscurity other to move different than Google.”

But Mehta yet did not spell arsenic acold arsenic the DOJ hoped successful his remedies decision, declining to break up the company by requiring a waste of its Chrome browser, which the authorities based on was a cardinal distribution constituent for hunt services. He alternatively ordered the institution to stock hunt accusation pinch competitors that could thief them summation a foothold successful the marketplace successful an effort to reconstruct title for hunt services.

Google had to hold until Mehta issued his remedies ruling successful September earlier appealing the underlying monopoly finding. The lawsuit could yet agelong astatine slightest a mates much years, particularly if it goes each the measurement up to the Supreme Court.

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