Google has avoided one of the biggest threats to its business after a US judge ruled it will not have to sell its Chrome browser. But the court has still placed new limits on the company to curb its power.
The case was part of a long battle between Google and the US Justice Department, which accused the company of running an illegal monopoly in online search. After five years of hearings and arguments, Judge Amit Mehta gave his verdict this week in Washington, DC.
The government wanted Google to be broken up, including selling Chrome, the world’s most widely used web browser. But the judge said that demand went too far. He also refused to block Google’s billion-dollar deals with phone makers and computer companies that make Google the default search engine on their devices. Those deals cost Google over $26 billion a year but help keep its search engine in front of billions of users.
Even so, the ruling is far from a free pass. The judge ordered Google to share some of its most valuable data — information collected from trillions of past searches. That data is what makes Google’s search results so accurate and reliable. By forcing Google to open it up, the court hopes other search engines will finally have a chance to compete.
This decision comes at a time when Google’s dominance is already being challenged by new AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, which are offering people different ways to get answers online.
In simple terms, the court has told Google: you can keep Chrome, but you can’t keep all your advantages locked away. Competitors need a fair shot.
For everyday users, nothing will change immediately. Google will still look and work the same. But in the long run, this could mean more options for how people search the web — and perhaps new players rising to challenge Google’s grip on the internet.