A federal judge has ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in the US. “The reality of the market is that Google is the only real choice” as the default search engine, Judge Amit Mehta said in his ruling, and he ruled it was unfairly made. It’s a decision that could bring big changes to the company, but we don’t know how big yet, and we may not know for years.
Mehta said Monday that Google was responsible for violating antitrust laws, justifying the Justice Department and a coalition of states that sued the tech giant in 2020. The next step — deciding on remedies for its illegal behavior — begins next month. . Both sides must submit a proposed plan for legal proceedings by September 4 and then appear at a status conference on September 6.
Google and prosecutors will battle over how severe his sentence should be, presenting expert witnesses and written testimony before Mehta issues another opinion and order. However, the exact timeline is unclear. William Kovacic, a former chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and a professor at George Washington University, says threshold that he expects Judge Amit Mehta to hold a roughly week-long hearing on the remedies this year and believes the overall process could last until the end of 2024.
Rebecca Haw Allensworth, an antitrust professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, expects a fight that could last up to a year. “There will be gnashing of teeth on the medicine and that will make it take a long time,” says Allensworth.
There is a wide range of possible remedies. The most dramatic thing would be to break up Google to reduce its control of online search and advertising, but it’s also probably the most unlikely, Allensworth says. Monday’s decision was “a really dramatic win for the Biden administration and it’s a really dramatic loss for Google, but it’s not out there,” says Allensworth. She thinks Mehta’s limitation is one of the “real strengths” of the opinion, but it shows that “I don’t think we would expect the drug to really be there.”
A more lenient remedy, which Kovacic finds most likely, is an injunction that “directs Google to cease conduct that the court has found to be improper.” But even this involves changes that can range from trivial to seismic. Mehta could ask Google to modify its multibillion-dollar deals with companies like Apple and Mozilla, for example, that cement it as the default search engine for products like the iPhone.
Allensworth notes another possible solution would be to require Google to share data or even some search algorithm information with other companies. “I think that has the benefit of directly addressing some of the issues that the judge is concerned about in his opinion,” she says. But Allensworth notes that “courts are reluctant, for a variety of reasons, to compel separation between rivals.”
Whatever remedies the court seeks, Google may not take them for a long time. Google has already said it will appeal the decision. Appellate courts typically evaluate liability and remedy decisions in the same proceeding, but Google can appeal a loss there in the High Court, and it can seek an injunction to prevent any change until the case is resolved. (Apple took a years-long hiatus from tweaking App Store rules in an antitrust battle with Epic.)
says Kovacic threshold that we may see a Supreme Court decision by the end of 2026. Other timelines are less optimistic; George Hay, a law professor at Cornell University, said Associated Press a time limit of up to five years.
If one of these higher courts rules in Google’s favor, the final outcome could depend on how the next president’s Justice Department reacts. Microsoft, for example, narrowly avoided a breakup in the early 2000s—the incoming George W. Bush administration settled its predecessor’s case rather than postpone an appeals court loss. But in 2024, Republican nominee Donald Trump has a long-standing grudge against Google and recently suggested it might be “shut down,” while the antitrust record of VP and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is relatively sparse — but the Biden administration where she has served has taken an aggressive stance against technology monopolies. Anyone can decide to look into the matter.
Whatever the outcome, this is not the only antitrust case, or even the only antitrust case against Google, on the horizon. A major lawsuit is pending against Apple, Amazon and Meta. Google itself will face another test in September – this time over its ad technology.