Judge Allows Google to Keep Chrome, Orders It to Share Data With Rivals

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Google can keep its Chrome browser during the ongoing antitrust battle, in what is considered a win for the tech giant. However, the company has been ordered to share the data it uses to improve search results, granting competitors access to information that was previously private.

According to CBS News, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta denied the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) request to force Google to sell parts of its business, such as its browser Chrome or Android operating system, as a remedy for its search monopoly.

This comes just months after U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled in April that Google had violated antitrust laws, stating that the tech giant had been “willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power.” The latest hearing, however, took a different approach.

In a 226-page opinion issued in Washington, Judge Mehta explained that the rapid development of technologies such as artificial intelligence is reshaping the search industry and affecting general search engines (GSEs).

“Today, tens of millions of people use GenAI chatbots, like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, to gather information that they previously sought through internet search,” states the document. “These GenAI chatbots are not yet close to replacing GSEs, but the industry expects that developers will continue to add features to GenAI products to perform more like GSEs.”

Judge Mehta added that this case is unusual because a decision cannot be based solely on historical facts: “The court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future.”

Instead of requiring Google to sell parts of its business—such as Chrome, which already had buying offers such as Perplexity’s $34.5 billion bid—, the judge ordered the company to share the data gathered for users’ trillions of queries, used by the tech giant to optimize searches.

“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,” wrote Google in a recent statement on its website. “This 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. That’s why we disagree so strongly with the Court’s initial decision in August 2024 on liability.”