Judge who ruled Google is a monopoly decides to do hardly anything to break it up

Champagne will be flowing at Google HQ after US District Judge Amit Mehta decided to do very little to rein in the monopolistic web giant. In his 230-page ruling Mehta, who last August ruled that Google broke US competition law, decided the search behemoth will not have to divest its Chrome browser or Android operating systems …

[Gary Stewart]

That's the way it works for big businesses in the US.

Oh no, if we fine them or break them up they might get the idea that doing it again is a bad idea. OK, we can fine them but make sure it's one day's profit. Or, if we break them up make sure that there are no impediments to reconstituting the original business in it's full glory (think AT&T). That will teach them, that we really don't want to hurt their feelings. Say, have you talked to my reelection PAC lately?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why breaking a good business?

What should really be addressed are:

- Acquisitions of competition or easily-reproducible products. Examples: WhatsApp or Blogspot.

- Landlordism, which has de-facto replaced capitalism, and is the main modus operandi of Western banking system, with boom/burst cycles of debt-financed property pyramid (not "property ladder"). It is really a modern form of feudalism.

Silicon Valley managed to escape landlordism by decentralization of its business. Which is nearly impossible for real industries. Besides real industries are not as profitable, so landlordism has effectively killed them in most western countries. UK is a perfect example.

- Wealth concentration, which could be resolved by land value tax and exponential progressive tax. Exponential, because wealth concentrates somewhat exponentially due to economy of scale.

As for Google, AI indeed may kill its core business. My personal usage of Google Search dropped 20x.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why breaking a good business?

"As for Google, AI indeed may kill its core business. My personal usage of Google Search dropped 20x."

My use of Google for searching hasn't been affected at all by AI - I haven't used Google search for many years. On all Apple products I use, it's easy to switch to a different search engine and DDG has worked well for me. I've noticed an AI response at the top of each results page but I scroll straight past it (and AdGuard ensures there aren't any ads to get in the way). If the first couple of pages don't yield what I'm looking for, I tweak my search terms. Bing is the default on my Windows VM (albeit rarely used); it's DDG on my Linux VMs.

[MonkeyJuice]

Re: Why breaking a good business?

https://html.duckduckgo.com/html

Oh look. No JavaScript or AI! I guess they don't like to advertise it too loudly because they like a bit of advertisement income, but it's there, and they've been honest enough not to pull it just yet. This endpoint is no doubt the canary in the ddg mine- when it goes, I so do I.

[FF22]

Clueless

" these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints." - That's all you need to read to learn how clueless the judge is, and how much he did not understand any implications of Google having Chrome or Android under its control. And then I even granted him the benefit of doubt of being really just uninformed and dumb, not corrupt.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Clueless

The whole US justice system comes across as money grabbing and corrupt. They know how to spin things out to their own financial benefit. Like most solicitors and barristers in the UK as well, to be fair about it. And of course they are clueless as well. Most judges are old fogies past their best before date, and haven't lived in the real world for years, if at all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Clueless

"The whole US justice system comes across as money grabbing and corrupt."

Come on, what power does the legal system have in 2025 USA? Unless you are but a simple peon, their decisions simply don't matter anymore. If you're somebody, keep doing your thing and ignore them, they're just an annoying background noise, soon to be DOGEd into oblivion.

The famous "separation of powers" principle of democratic systems of government (clearly compartmentalizing the different types of state power (law-making, adjudication, execution)) has been torn down in this country, and has been replaced by the good old feudal system revolving around lords, vassals and fiefs: The lord will appoint fiefs (positions, goods) to his most trusted vassals, and in return those are bound to serve him without question. Judges don't fit in this system, unless they are vassals executing their lord's will.

Sad.

[JWLong]

As the Money Flows.....

From the WhiteHouse to the CourtHouse and on to the OutHouse, this case proves that this country is on a downhill slide and will end up back in the 1930's.

Brown envelopes for all in office. I hope they enjoy their take. /s

[TReko]

Re: As the Money Flows.....

Minor news story from 2026: Judge Amit Mehta resigns the bench and goes to work as a "consultant" for Google.

[DS999]

Sounds like their deal with Apple will be unchanged

Court said it can't be exclusive - and it already isn't because the default on iPhones sold in China is Baidu.

The requirement for "sharing search data" is kind of hilarious coming in 2025, especially since this will be appealed and wouldn't be final until several years later. Does anything think Google Search is as important today as it was five years ago? I wonder if it will be important AT ALL five years from now... Even after the AI bubble bursts there will be some things it will continue to be used for, and one of those will certainly be search.

No doubt Google would be able to convince the court that their monopoly was on "traditional" search, and they have a whole bunch of new competitors in the AI field so they can't subject them to the same requirements for AI enabled search.

So they might get away with NOTHING done, despite being ruled a monopoly. Oh well maybe the EU will force them to divest Chrome, though considering what they did to Microsoft with the 'E' version of Windows without IE they'd probably do something equally stupid like requiring Google Chrome to be distributed without the ability to run extensions.

[Ken Hagan]

This isn't Minority Report

AI is irrelevant. It hasn't happened yet.

Google's monopoly abuse has happened. Whatever happened to the idea that court might dish out punishments for past misdemeanors rather than try to dish out remedies to avoid possible future ones?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This isn't Minority Report

Exactly. The web had reduced MS monopoly reach (and Linux as well), but it couldn't be taken into account back then. Nobody would have been able to pronosticate it. While Google still controls a lot of endpoints through Chrome and Android - and how would AI change that? Instead, Google has ways to turn a lot of users towards its AI.

[DS999]

Re: This isn't Minority Report

Seems almost a given that most Android users will end up using Google's AI for search in the future, just like almost all of them end up using other Google tools that are built into Android even though they have the option of installing something else. No doubt Google will see this ruling as cover to build their AI into Chrome, and unless you dig into settings and disable it it'll be used all over the place when you're using Chrome. Probably offering to "help" you write posts on the Reg, Clippy style! If that ends up giving them a monopoly on AI (at least consumer facing AI) they'll enjoy at least a decade of monopoly until there's a chance regulators start looking into it.

Surely the court could have at least required some type of supervision of Google with regard to this important new market. They've done that with others found to have been abusing a monopoly, and even if that doesn't have any sharp teeth it still might have give them pause before they decide to ship "all new Gemini Chrome" that they've probably been secretly preparing in a fork awaiting the outcome of this case.

[Anonymous Coward]

AI poses a threat to web searches?

Only in the minds of those foisting it on us.

Anyone who wants correct search results - not even comprehensive, correct will do - skips straight past the AI "results".

Perhaps the Judge was using AI results to come to the conclusion that this is useful?

Or was he only judging that other players are doing better than Google at enshittifying search so that lets them off the hook?

[teebie]

Re: AI poses a threat to web searches?

"AI poses a threat to web searches? "

It does, it makes them less accurate. Which probably isn't what the judge meant by his comments.

[katrinab]

Google is not the default search engine on Windows, and Chrome is not the default browser; but Chrome as 70% share of the desktop browser market. Safari is 6% and obviously that isn't running on Windows, so the Windows desktop browser market is likely higher than that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google used the anti-trust case against MS and IE to replace it on Windows, using sleazy tactics like bunding it in a lot of product that installed it without the user consent.

[DS999]

Yep, and it tanked IE's market enough that they decided it wasn't worth the expense of continuing to develop their own browser, so they effectively surrendered to Google by using Chromium as the base for their new browser.

Imagine if they'd decided to base it on Firefox, or on Webkit. There would be some real browser competition on the Windows desktop, but other than Firefox's tiny share that's all but dead now. It could have breathed new life into Firefox's development having Microsoft on board, and if Microsoft threw in a little money Firefox wouldn't be so heavily dependent on Google as their main source of income.

I kind of wonder with this ruling if Google might axe that search deal with Firefox and try to kill them off. No need for them now since apparently the court considers browser competition unimportant, and cutting off that "exclusive search deal" could even be claimed as something they "had to do" to be compliant with the court's ruling!

[Gene Cash]

Microsoft's lock-in attempts with IE 5 and 6 tanked IE's market. I know people that wouldn't touch it with someone else's 10ft pole because of those bad memories.

[Pat Harkin]

Re: US District Judge Amit Mehta decided to do very little to rein in the monopolistic web giant.

I thought Meta was part of Facebook, not Google?

[Tron]

A window of opportunity.

If the AI bubble now deflates, Google will have absolutely nailed their timing for this case.

I would guess that this also protect's Mozilla's income from Google, so not all bad.

Even if Google had been broken up, ordinary users would have seen no benefits. Three big corporations instead of one. Just more suits getting fat pay cheques.

[cjcox]

Microsoft got the monopoly label.... what did we do there?

Just pointing out that "not doing anything" has historical precedence.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Microsoft got the monopoly label.... what did we do there?

More was done against Microsoft that now with Google. And MS became far more cautious after that. I don't believe Google fears anything now.

Of course MAGA will do their best to take control of any propaganda machine - starting from complaining their mails are flagged as spam, but that's another story, They might menace something to put them in line and allow them to spread whatever pass their mind in a given day, sure. But as soon as Google present Trumpo a gold dick everything will be fine and they can keep on crippling competition.

[mostly average]

Playing devil's advocate or something...

Do you think it could be considered a conflict of interest if the honorable judge has an android phone/tablet/television, Chromebook, Gmail account, Google photos, and/or uses Chrome browser?

See icon.

[CorwinX]

This raises an interesting point

Simply being the best at web searches, which Google is, doesn't automatically translate to an *illegal* monopoly.

If people *choose* to use Google, over say Bing, then that's their choice.

Given that the likes of Bing and DuckDuckGo exist shows that Google does have competitors. Just not particularly good ones.

Is it illegal to simply be the best at what you do?

[ThatOne]

Re: This raises an interesting point

They are the best? LOL! You clearly didn't use Google search in the last 3-4 years (maybe more).

Google is just a staple, for many people Google (search) is the internet. You give them an URL like "www.site.com", and they will enter it into Google search to go there...

_{(Didn't downvote you though.)}

[J.G.Harston]

Monopoly? What monopoly? Yahoo, Bing, Duck, Fireball, Dogpile, Lycos, Jeeves......

[Annihilator]

Earlier this year Mozilla's CFO warned that cutting the Google subsidy would "potentially start a downward spiral of usage as people defected from our browser, which ... could at the end of the day put Firefox out of business,"

I'm pretty sure Mozilla are doing a good enough job of that on their own.