Google will not be forced to sell Chrome, with the tech giant avoiding the most significant penalties following a landmark antitrust case where it was found to be operating a search engine monopoly.
US federal judge Amit Mehta ruled last year that Google had created an illegal monopoly in the search engine market by violating antitrust law, spending billions of dollars on deals with device manufacturers to be the default search provider.
Following hearings earlier this year to determine the penalties to be imposed, Mehta this week rejected the federal prosecutors’ request for Google to be forced to sell off the Chrome browser, saying this would be “incredibly messy and highly risky”.
Google has, however, been ordered to provide search engine data, including search index and user interaction information, with its rivals and banned from entering exclusive deals with device makers.
The penalties have dismayed digital rights advocates, with the American Economic Liberties project labelling the ruling a “complete failure”.
Google dodges the most serious penalties
In a 230-page ruling, Mehta said that the prosecutors had “overreached in seeking forced divestiture of these key assets”.
“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’,” he said in the ruling.
“After two complete trials, this court cannot find that Google’s market dominance is sufficiently attributable to its illegal conduct to justify divestiture."
The judge however did back the prosecutors’ push for Google to be prevented from entering or maintaining exclusive contracts to ensure its products, such as Chrome, Google Assistant and Gemini, were featured on devices.
Google will also have to establish a technology oversight committee to ensure compliance with the court orders for six years.
In the ruling, the judge said that the emergence of generative artificial intelligence “changed the course of this case”.
Google reacts
US Department of Justice Antitrust Division Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater said the agency would “continue to review the opinion to consider the department’s options and next steps regarding seeking additional relief”.
In a blog post following the orders, Google vice-president of regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said the company had “concerns” about the requirement to share some search data with rival companies and how this will impact users and their privacy.
“The court did recognise that divesting Chrome and Android would have gone beyond the case’s focus on search distribution, and would have harmed consumers and our partners,” Mulholland said in the post.
The decision to not force Google to sell off Chrome has been slammed by digital rights advocacy group American Economic Liberties.
“You don’t find someone guilty of robbing a bank and then sentence him to writing a thank you note for the loot,” American Economic Liberties executive director Nidhi Hegde said.
“Similarly, you don’t find Google liable for monopolisation and then write a remedy that lets it protect its monopoly.”
Google also recently lost another antitrust case in the US, in relation to online advertising.
It was ruled that Google had behaved anticompetitively in order to monopolise the complicated digital advertising technology market.
The US government has launched a number of antitrust lawsuits against some of the biggest tech companies in the world in recent years.
A case in relation to Facebook parent company Meta’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp kicked off in April, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg taking the stand.
During his testimony, Zuckerberg denied the company had engaged in a “buy or bury” scheme with its rivals.
Early last year the US government also filed a major antitrust lawsuit against Apple, alleging the tech titan had overseen an illegal iPhone monopoly that led to higher prices and less innovation for users.
