Google’s avoidance of the most interventionist, structural remedies in the DOJ’s case against it herald an era of blunted ambition for global tech antitrust
The US District Court has issued its remedies decision in the Google Search case, pending (likely) appeal
On 2 September 2025, Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued his decision on remedies in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) antitrust case against Google. The court’s decision follows its August 2024 ruling that “Google is a monopolist” and maintains an illegal monopoly in the search services and search advertising markets in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Both Google and the DOJ were provided an opportunity to submit recommendations for remedies to the court and will also be given the chance to appeal the decision on Google’s liability as well as the decision on the imposed remedies. Though neither party has expressly stated their intent to appeal yet, both Google and the DOJ have noted that they are actively reviewing the decision and will have 30 days from the final judgment to file an appeal.
Judge Mehta denied almost all of the remedies proposed by the DOJ, including the proposed sale of Chrome or the Android operating system
Judge Mehta’s decision notably diverged from the DOJ’s recommendation for structural remedies to address Google’s anti-competitive behaviour. Mehta ruled that Google would not be required to sell its Chrome browser nor its Android operating system, stating that the DOJ had “overreached” in seeking forced divestiture. The court also denied or limited a series of behavioural remedy recommendations from the DOJ, refusing to bar Google from making any payments to device makers in agreement for distribution of its services and to implement requirements for choice screens within its own products or through its Android distribution partners. Instead, Google will be required to share a limited scope of data with competitors, including search index and user-interaction data but not query-level data, and will be prohibited from requiring exclusivity in its agreements with device manufacturers for the distribution of its services, including Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, Google Play Store and the Gemini app. Considering Google’s argument that it had already stripped exclusivity terms from its agreements with distributors in its earlier filing on remedies, those ultimately adopted by the court represent a minimalist intervention into the search services market. Considering this underwhelming outcome for the DOJ, it is unsurprising that Gail Slater (Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division, DOJ) has pledged the agency will review “next steps regarding seeking additional relief”.
The growth of generative AI services weighed heavily in the court’s decision, despite limited consideration for the influence of big tech in the market
The court’s decision relies heavily on the assumption that the supposed rapid growth in the market for generative AI services will provide an effective competitive constraint on Google in the search market – an argument made by Google over the course of the trial. Judge Mehta highlighted the speed with which AI appears to have unsettled the search market, noting that no witnesses at the liability phase testified to its impact whereas the first witness called during the remedies hearings discussed its growing importance. After discussing competition within the generative AI market, pointing to services provided by OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity alongside those offered by big tech firms, including Meta, Microsoft and X, the court ultimately found that generative AI services are sufficiently similar to search services in ruling that these firms and their services are competitors of Google. The court does little, however, to discuss the commercial relationships between these firms, choosing not to consider the recent regulatory attention paid to the influence of big tech firms on competition within AI markets and the potential for a decline in competition as these services mature.
Big tech firms will be optimistic as the ambition of global tech antitrust enforcement fades rapidly
Avoiding structural remedies and more significant behavioural obligations represents a cause for significant optimism for Google amid a recent history of increased scrutiny under both ex-post and ex-ante competition regulation. Globally, the firm faces two further pending antitrust investigations into its search services, as well as scrutiny under both the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the EU and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Act in the UK. The relatively benign approach to remedies in the US case, however, is symbolic of the more blunted ambition with which governments and regulators have approached competition regulation in tech markets in recent months. In the same week in the EU, Google also avoided the imposition of structural remedies by the EC through an investigation into its online advertising (adtech) services in a case where preliminary findings suggested that a break up of the firm’s adtech stack holdings was the only way to settle the inherent conflicts of interest within the market. Other big tech firms, including Meta, Amazon and Apple, each of which also having antitrust cases pending before US courts, may also be heartened by the dip in enthusiasm for bolder intervention into digital markets, even as the impact of ex-ante regimes remain uncertain through the early phases of implementation and enforcement.
