Google avoids breakup in search monopoly case, but judge orders other changes in landmark ruling

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a major makeover of Google’s search engine in a crackdown aimed at curbing the corrosive power of an illegal monopoly, but rebuffed the U.S. government’s request to break up the company.

The 226-page decision made by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C., will likely ripple across the technological landscape at a time when the industry is being reshaped by artificial intelligence breakthroughs — including conversational “answer engines” as companies like ChatGPT and Perplexity try to upend Google’s long-held position as the internet’s main gateway.

Mehta is trying to rein in Google by placing new restraints on some of the tactics the company deployed to drive traffic to its search engine and other services. But the judge stopped short of banning the multi-billion dollar deals that Google has been making for years to lock in its search engine as the default on smartphones, personal computers and other devices. Those deals, involving payments of more than $26 billion annually, were a focal point of a nearly five-year-old antitrust case brought by the U.S. Justice Department.

The judge also rejected the U.S. Justice Department’s effort to force Google to sell its popular Chrome browser, concluding the request was a bridge too far.

But Mehta is ordering Google to give its current and would-be rivals access to some of its search engine’s secret sauce — the data stockpiled from trillions of queries that helped to continually improve the quality of its search results.