Google Search is considered to be the technology industry’s greatest business. It allows Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to generate more profit than any other U.S. company, including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and Berkshire Hathaway.
In the wake of Judge Amit P. Mehta’s ruling on Tuesday in an antitrust lawsuit, Google is positioned to keep that business running largely without interruption.
The Silicon Valley giant, which was found in a trial last year to have abused a monopoly over the search industry, has to make only modest changes to correct its behavior. Under Judge Mehta’s ruling, it will have to share more of its data with competitors and create an oversight committee to monitor its business practices. But it can continue many operations that the government challenged in the lawsuit, including its payments to Apple to automatically handle search queries and its control over the Chrome browser.
Google’s share price jumped more than 8 percent in after-hours trading, as investors celebrated the ruling.
Here’s a closer look at what the ruling means for Google’s business, should it be upheld after what is expected to be a lengthy appeals process.
Google must share only certain data.
Under Judge Mehta’s ruling, Google is required to hand over some search results to rival companies. Sharing its data, which has been the backbone of its search engine, could help Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity and others improve their search products.
Throughout the trial, such data was described as “the oxygen” for search engines. Google has harvested vast amounts of data over the years from searches — nine times all its rivals combined — and analyzed it to make sure that the company provides users with better answers than anyone else. It was a key to Google’s dominance.
Judge Mehta said sharing a narrow amount of search data would help competitors improve their search systems. The data will help rivals identify and crawl more websites, so that they can provide better results to search queries.
But Google avoided having to share some of its most important data. Judge Mehta declined the government’s request that Google be required to share all of its search index, a database that helps users quickly reach information they are seeking. He also denied a request that Google share a database containing information about people, places and things that can be used to help accurately fulfill search queries.
It’s hard to know how much Microsoft, OpenAI and others will benefit, said Jim Jansen, the principal scientist in the artificial intelligence group of the Qatar Computing Research Institute and a former professor at Pennsylvania State University. A decade ago, he said, the data would have been much more valuable, but today, Google collects so much information that “a lot of the data is noise.”
It will also be complicated for Google and the court to manage the data it shares, Mr. Jansen said. Users agree to share their data with Google, not a third party, when they do searches.
“This is an administration nightmare, with all sorts of privacy issues,” Mr. Jansen said.
Google must adapt to a Microsoft-style committee.
Judge Mehta on Tuesday asked that Google create an antitrust technical committee. The five-person group, which will include experts on privacy, will be responsible for making sure that Google complies with the court ruling. It would ensure that the company shared the appropriate data with rivals, while safeguarding user privacy.
The committee echoes what Microsoft had to do after it lost its antitrust case a quarter-century ago. At the time, Microsoft agreed to establish an internal antitrust technical committee and compliance program. The group reviewed Windows and other products before their release to be sure that Microsoft was following the law. The court and the company credited the committee with changing Microsoft’s behavior.
But pay to play continues.
When the Justice Department filed its antitrust case against Google in 2020, it targeted not only Google but Apple.
Google paid Apple about $20 billion annually to handle search queries on iPhones. Each search helped Google make more advertising money than rivals and gave it more data to improve its ability to accurately field queries. It also gave Apple billions of reasons not to develop its own search engine.
In his ruling on Tuesday, Judge Mehta acknowledged the government’s rationale for asking the court to end those payments. But he decided to allow them because he worried a restriction might be bad for consumers. A ban could force smartphone and browser companies like Apple and Firefox to increase prices to make up for lost sales from Google or choose a worse search engine for less money, he said.
Apple also keeps its profits.
Google’s roughly $20 billion payments to be the automatic search engine on iPhones have been a major windfall for Apple. Had Apple been blocked from taking those payments, as the Justice Department asked, the company’s annual profit would have been reduced by 15 percent, Wall Street analysts estimated.
When Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of services, took the stand in the Google case in May, he argued that advances in artificial intelligence showed that the antitrust threat of Google was shrinking. He warned that punishing Google by blocking payments to Apple and others “just seems crazy.”
Judge Mehta agreed on Tuesday. In doing so, he saved Apple from a major change to its business. Shareholders responded by sending Apple’s stock up more than 3 percent in after-hours trading.
And Chrome dodged a bullet.
Judge Mehta declined the Justice Department’s request to force Google to sell its Chrome browser. He said that while the Chrome browser “undoubtedly” contributed to Google’s search dominance, the forced divestiture of the browser was “a poor fit for this case.”
Artificial intelligence is showing that the browser could be a new kind of operating system for the web, with the ability to not only search for information but also do work for users. A new browser called Dia, which is powered by A.I., summarizes breaking news articles, suggests websites to visit and writes video recaps.
With its 50 percent share of the browser market in the United States, Google is positioned to take advantage of the new uses of A.I. to have Chrome fulfill shopping requests and answer questions. It won’t have to watch as OpenAI, Microsoft and others compete to define that experience without it.
Tripp Mickle reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His focus on Apple includes product launches, manufacturing issues and political challenges. He also writes about trends across the tech industry, including layoffs, generative A.I. and robot taxis.
Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy for The Times from Washington. She has written about technology for over two decades.
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