MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – As reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, Google has been ordered to “hand over its search results and some data” to competitors. The order by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia stopped short of forcing the Mountain View, Calif-based Google to “break up” by selling its Chrome web browser.
“Judge Mehta said in the 223-page ruling that Google must share some of its search data with ‘qualified competitors’ to resolve its monopoly,” wrote NY Times reporter David McCabe. “The Justice Department had asked the judge to force the company to share even more of its data, arguing it was key to Google’s dominance. Judge Mehta also put restrictions on payments that Google uses to ensure its search engine gets prime placement in web browsers and on smartphones. But he stopped short of banning those payments entirely and did not grant the government’s request that Google be forced to sell Chrome, which the government said was necessary to remedy the company’s power as a search monopoly.”
Calling it a “conservative” ruling, McCabe characterized the decision as a “blow to the government’s all-out push in recent years to challenge the dominance of the biggest tech companies. Under both the Biden and Trump administrations, the federal government accused Google, Apple, Amazon and Meta of anticompetitive behavior meant to illegally monopolize parts of the internet.”
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