Google avoids breaking but must share data with competitors

Google will not have to sell its Chrome web browser but must share information with competitors, ordered an American federal judge.

The appeals decided by the district judge Amit Mehta emerged after a legal battle of several years on the domination of Google in online research.

The case was focused on Google’s position as default search engine on a range of its own products such as Android and Chrome as well as others manufactured by Apple.

The United States Ministry of Justice had demanded that Google sells Chrome – Tuesday’s decision means that the technology giant can keep it, but it will not be prohibited to have exclusive contracts and must share research data with competitors.

Google had proposed less drastic solutions, such as the limitation of its income sharing agreements with companies like Apple to make its default search engine on their devices and browsers.

On Tuesday, the company said that it considered the decision to be a victory and said that the rise in artificial intelligence (AI) had probably contributed to the result.

“Today’s decision recognizes how the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which gives people so much more ways to find information,” Google said in a statement after the decision.

“This highlights what we have said since this case was tabled in 2020: competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they wish,” the statement continued.

The technology giant had denied reprehensible acts because the accusations were deposited for the first time against him in 2020, saying that his market domination is because his search engine is a product superior to others and consumers simply prefer it to others.

Last year, judge Mehta decided that Google had used unfair methods to establish a monopoly on the online research market, actively working to maintain a level of domination insofar as it has violated US law.

But in his decision, judge Mehta said that a full sale of Chrome was “a bad choice for this case”.

Google will also not have to sell its Android operating system, which feeds most world smartphones.

The company had argued that parts of unloading its operations, such as Android, would mean that they would effectively cease to function properly.

“Today’s appeal order agreed with the need to restore competition in the long -term research market, and we now assess our options and we wonder if the ordered relief will be far enough to serve this objective,” wrote the deputy prosecutor Abigail Slater on X after the decision.

Alphabet’s actions, Google’s parent company, jumped more than 8% after the decision.

Smartphones manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung and Motorola will also benefit.

Before the decision, Google paid these companies billions of dollars to pre-car or promote exclusively the products of the technological company.

It was revealed at the trial that Google paid more than $ 26 billion for such offers with Apple, Mozilla and others in 2021.

Now Google will not be allowed to conclude exclusive contracts for Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant or the Gemini application.

This means that phone manufacturers will be free to preload or promote other search engines, browsers or AI assistants alongside Google.

Google will however be able to continue to pay the distributors for the default placement.

Gene Munster, director partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said the decision was “good news for Big Tech”.

“Apple also gets a great victory because Google leaders to renegotiate the research agreement each year,” he said on X.

The decision of judge Mehta “does not seem to be as draconian as the market,” said Melissa Otto, research manager at S&P Global Visible Alpha.

With Google’s research operations that are expected to generate nearly $ 200 billion this year, and tens of billions of those who should go to distribution partners, it is a win-win for the main players in the business involved in the case, said Ms. Otto.

But the competitor of Google, DuckduckGo, said that the order had “not” forced the necessary changes to treat Google’s illegal behavior “.

“Consequently, consumers will continue to suffer,” said DuckDuckGo’s founder and CEO Gabriel Weinberg.

The decision is not the end of the fighting of the technology giant.

Later this month, Google should be tried in a separate case filed by the Ministry of Justice where a judge noted that the company holds illegal monopolies in online advertising technology.