US District Judge Amit Mehta’s long-awaited ruling on United States of America v. Google landed Tuesday, and it’s less of a hammer blow than antitrust hawks had hoped. As the New York Times reports, while Google has officially been found to maintain an illegal monopoly on general search and text ads, the landmark judgment stopped short of ordering the most aggressive penalties. There will be no Chrome sell-off, no ban on Google’s multibillion-dollar default search deals, and no sanctions for evidence destruction.
Instead, the company faces a narrower, though still possibly meaningful, set of restrictions that could alter how search rivals operate and how everyday users experience the web.
Google escapes the nuclear option(s)
But there’s a silver lining for competitors and consumers
The court made one potentially powerful demand. Google must hand over some of its valuable search data to what Judge Mehta called “qualified competitors.” The Department of Justice argued that Google’s enormous search dataset was a self-reinforcing barrier, letting its algorithms get smarter while starving Bing, DuckDuckGo, and others.
Mehta acknowledged the competitive imbalance but cited Supreme Court precedent in refusing to force feature parity on Google’s ad products. Still, requiring data sharing is a crack in the wall of Google’s garden. In theory, it could lead to better results for consumers if competitors can finally train more capable search engines.
Why Google made it out relatively unscathed
Judge Mehta split the difference on default placement payments — the billions Google pays Apple, Samsung, and browser makers for prime real estate. He didn’t ban the practice, but he imposed new limits designed to make it easier for partners to walk away or to provide alternatives. That means Safari and Chrome users could start seeing more or clearer prompts to try competing search engines. But don’t expect Google’s near-total market share to collapse overnight. The company can still pay for preference, just not quite as aggressively as before.
The DOJ had also pressed for sanctions over Google’s infamous chat deletion policy and its “Communicate with Care” program, which encouraged employees to slap lawyers onto sensitive emails to manufacture privilege. Mehta called Google’s behavior troubling, but decided punishing the company wouldn’t change anything. In other words, Google got a sharp scolding, but no real penalties.
What’s striking about the opinion is its restraint. Mehta leaned on established antitrust doctrine in warning against turning courts into “central planners” for tech firms. For example, the states’ claim that Google sabotaged Microsoft Ads with Search Ads 360 was tossed aside on the grounds that even monopolists aren’t required to help rivals. In his view, forcing parity would leave the court responsible for floods of product and engineering oversight, which isn’t a judge’s specialty.
What the judgment means for users
AI tools are changing the new game faster than courts can rule on the old one.
Cynical viewers may have predicted Google getting off relatively easy, but it didn’t score a complete win. While the ruling avoids a gutting structural breakup or a forced Chrome spinoff, the mandated data sharing could chip away at Google’s edge. And while the company dodged sanctions this time, Mehta warned that its mistreatment of evidence might not go unpunished in future cases.
For consumers, the most immediate impact will likely be subtle: a few more search options on devices where Google has long been locked in, and possibly sharper competition that leads to better-quality search over time. But the bigger battle — whether rivals can actually make a dent in Google’s dominance — will play out slowly.
Meanwhile, the search landscape is already shifting under everyone’s feet. Generative AI tools from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity are redefining what “search” even means. Google is racing to bolt AI answers onto its results pages, hoping to preserve its dominance in a world where users increasingly talk to chatbots instead of typing keywords. The irony is that by the time courts finish litigating, the market itself may have moved on.
