A court will not force Google to sell its Chrome or Android browser, a federal judge said on Tuesday in a court. The decision serves as an important victory for the technological society, which avoided the most extreme result possible of a historic antitrust case which determined that the company exploited an illegal online research monopoly.
Although Google is not forced to sell its Android browser or its Android, it will have to make certain research data available to skilled competitors to promote competition. He will not also be prohibited from entering or maintaining exclusive contracts related to the distribution of services such as Chrome, Search, The Google Assistant and its Gemini application.
These agreements provide an important source of income for Google and wide access to its services, although the company has proposed to abandon these contracts as a potential appeal in the case. The judge of the American district court, Amit Mehta, said on Tuesday in a decision he had partially accepted the appeals proposed by Google.
The trial put Google’s basic heart under the microscope at a time when it is already threatened to be overthrown by AI chatbots. And this comes when the company is also preparing to defend the operation of its online advertising company after it was also deemed an illegal monopoly earlier this year.
“Google will not be required to disintegrate Chrome; the Court will not include a contingent disinvestment of the Android operating system in the final judgment,” said the file.
In a statement On Tuesday, Google said that the decision highlighted how the technological industry has changed with AI, which “gives people so much ways to find information”. However, he also cited confidentiality problems with the agreements.
“The court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google Services and we will force to share research data with competitors. We are concerned about the impact of these requirements and their privacy, and we are looking after the decision,” said the company.
The Ministry of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
The decision was closely monitored in Silicon Valley, as other major technology giants also fight the antitrust cases brought by the US government.
Mehta wrote that the rise in AIa generating tools “changed the course of this case”, adding that the guarantee of Google’s domination in research “does not resume in the Genai space” was a key element of the remedies procedures.
“And, unlike the typical case where the work of the court consists in resolving a dispute based on historical facts, here, the court is invited to look at a crystal ball and to look to the future,” he wrote. “Not exactly a void of a judge.”
Mehta judged last fall that Google had violated the American antitrust law with its research activities, writing that the company “is monopoly, and it acted as a monopoly”.
In the part of the “remedies” of the weeks of the trial, Google argued that the solutions proposed by the Ministry of Justice would harm consumers by making it more difficult to access their favorite search engine and could kill the American economy and American technological leadership. Chrome Parisa Tabriz testified that forcing Google for sale Chrome would lead to a “Shadow of the current” web browser and would probably make it “unsure and obsolete”.
Google has for years exclusive exclusive contracts of several billion dollars with apparatus manufacturers like Apple to guarantee its position as a default research provider on smartphones and web navigators, encouraging its domination by giving it what the Tribunal considers as an unfair advantage that is based on consumer habit rather than the choice. By 2020, 95% of all American research requests on mobile devices have passed through Google, Mehta noted in his opinion.
The decision to prevent Google from concluding exclusive distribution agreements is the means to level the rules of the game. Google will not be able to conclude agreements that force companies to preload Google Search, Chrome, the Google assistant or Gemini in order to concede to its popular population Google Play App Store.
But many telephone manufacturers will probably still include Google’s services because of their popularity, said Carolina Milanesi, president and principal analyst in the Creative Strategies technological research company.
“The value that these companies bring to the sellers and people who associate with them are such that I do not know how many people will decide not to preload their services,” she said.
Google will always be authorized to pay partners to distribute its services – including its search engine – on their products. Apple and Google have a lucrative affair in which the research giant pays billions of iPhone designers to be the default search engine on its web browser. The end of this partnership would have indicated that Google would no longer obtain default distribution on one of the most popular smartphones in the world, while drawing a lucrative Apple revenue source.
“The reduction of Google payments will certainly impose substantial damage – in certain cases, paralyzing – prejudices for distributing distribution partners, related markets and consumers, who advise a broad payment prohibition”, indicates the file.
Wedbush Securities analyst, Dan Ives, considers the decision as a victory for Apple and Google, in particular following a Bloomberg report that the two companies can join forces to integrate Gemini into Siri.
“While in theory, Google is prohibited from” exclusive transactions “for research, this now sets Apple’s bases to continue its agreement and, ultimately, double on a partnership linked to AI with Google Gemini at the bottom of the road,” he said in a research note.
The result is a victory for Google as a whole, explains Robert Siegel, management lecturer at the Stanford School of Business. But the decision to prohibit Google in concluding exclusive contracts means that the company may have to try a little stronger to encourage consumers to move forward, in particular in the middle of the increased competition of Rivaux like Openai and Perplexity – the latter made an unsolicited and eccentric offer to buy Chrome last month.
“All this will be on whom offers the best solution for the way people interact with technology and AI in the future,” said Siegel.
