Google’s antitrust case, taking aim at its monopoly of the search market, continues, but the company has sidestepped the worst. Chrome will remain under Google’s banner, despite what other courts and AI company Perplexity were hoping would happen.
Chrome buffer
Washington DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta, the same one who said that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” has now ruled that the company won’t have to give up its web browser as a result of ongoing antitrust action.
Instead, the company will face other remedies, since, Mehta ruled, “[p]laintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture [sic] of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.” Essentially, owning and using Chrome to conduct its affairs isn’t an illegal action in itself. Making Google dispose of it, therefore, is a step too far for the court.
The ruling isn’t unexpected, as prior signs indicated that the US legal system was looking to take matters more easily on the internet giant. Google has received, more or less, what it wanted from the ruling. It will be allowed to retain its paid contracts for search preference on Apple and Mozilla’s platforms, which funnel cash into the latter two entities.
It hasn’t all gone Google’s way, however. The search company can no longer require that its partners include Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or Gemini on devices or platforms. That doesn’t mean their inclusion is off the table, but it can’t be a precondition of doing business with the company. In theory, a smartphone maker could choose to leave one or more of these off their devices and still retain access to Gmail, YouTube, Maps, and other Google offerings.
Google is also required to provide some user metrics and search index data to so-called “qualified competitors” as a result of the ruling. Competing search engines would, in theory, use this data to improve their own services and narrow the gap between Google and its competitors.
These changes are supposed to be implemented by a technical committee, but Google is likely to stall the 60-day window for its inception by appealing even this favourable(ish) ruling. That’s also unsurprising, but it could well prove to be a tactical error. In the event the company loses its appeal, the conditions here could change and not for the better. Even these remedies could take years to implement due to Google’s pending appeal, with further action pushing that timeline back even further. For now, though, Google’s grip on Chrome is unshakeable.
