Google Can Keep Chrome Judge Amit Mehta Rules, Places Other Curbs

India-West News Desk

WASHINGTON, DC – In one of the most significant antitrust rulings since U.S. v. Microsoft, a federal judge has imposed new restrictions on Google but stopped short of ordering the company to sell its Chrome browser.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google must end exclusive deals that make its search engine the default on smartphones and other devices. The decision also requires the company to share portions of its search index and user interaction data with rivals and establishes a six-year oversight committee to monitor compliance.

At the same time, Mehta allowed Google to continue paying device makers to preload its products, including its Gemini AI chatbot, so long as the agreements are not exclusive.

He declined to impose the Justice Department’s most aggressive proposals, including a spinoff of Chrome.

Explaining that decision, Mehta wrote, “The court’s task is to discern between conduct that maintains a monopoly through anticompetitive acts as distinct from ‘growth or development as a consequence of a superior product, business acumen, or historic accident.’ After two complete trials, this court cannot find that Google’s market dominance is sufficiently attributable to its illegal conduct to justify divestiture.” He added that breaking up Chrome would be “incredibly messy and highly risky.”

The Justice Department had sought sweeping remedies after winning its case against Google last year, when Mehta found the company illegally maintained a monopoly through exclusive contracts with firms such as Apple and Samsung. These arrangements ensured Google’s search engine came preloaded on millions of devices, with billions of dollars flowing to partners in return.

Google fought back against those demands. CEO Sundar Pichai told the court the proposals were “so far-reaching, so extraordinary” that they were akin to forcing a sell-off of the company’s core intellectual property. The company objected strongly to licensing its search data, insisting it would compromise privacy and arguing that competition in AI was already robust.

Mehta’s order requires Google to share some search index and user interaction data but exempts its advertising business. “The money flowing into this space, and how quickly it has arrived, is astonishing,” he wrote. “These companies already are in a better position, both financially and technologically, to compete with Google than any traditional search company has been in decades (except perhaps Microsoft). These new realities give the court hope that Google will not simply outbid competitors for distribution if superior products emerge.”

For rivals, the decision was bittersweet. Weeks before the ruling, AI search startup Perplexity openly declared interest in buying Chrome for $34.5 billion, anticipating a forced sale that never came.

Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, welcomed the absence of a Chrome divestiture. “That would have gone beyond the case’s focus on search distribution, and would have harmed consumers and our partners,” she wrote in a company blog post. Still, she cautioned that mandatory data sharing “will impact our users and their privacy.”