Judge Amit P. Mehta has made a key ruling in the U.S. government’s antitrust case against Google.
The company will not have to sell its Chrome web browser, but must share information with competitors.
The remedies decided by District Judge Amit Mehta have emerged after a long years of court battle that in order to promote competition, ordered Google to share some of its valuable search data with rivals.
The US Department of Justice had sought a drastic measure to force Google to sell its Chrome Browser, but the judge rejected that demand from having exclusive contracts and ordered to share search data with competitors.
Google's defense team has proposed a solution such as limiting its revenue sharing agreements with firms like Apple to make its search engine the default on their browsers.
On Tuesday, the company indicated that it viewed the antitrust ruling as a victory and said the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has presumably contributed to the outcome.
Google said in a statement after the ruling, “Today’s decision recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information.”
The statement further stated, “These underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense, and people can easily choose the services they want.”
Previously, the tech giant had denied wrongdoings since charges were filed against it in 2020, saying that its search engine market supremacy is a result of being a superior product to others and consumers definitely prefer it to others.
Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater wrote on X after ruling, “Today’s remedy order agreed with the need to restore competition to the long-monopolized search market, and we are now weighing our options and thinking through whether the ordered relief goes far enough in serving that goal.”
