Google Will Not Be Forced to Divest Chrome or Android

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled that Google can no longer pay partners to make its search engine available exclusively on their platforms. But he is not requiring the online giant to divest itself of the Chrome web browser or Android, two extreme outcomes foisted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

“Google will be barred from entering or maintaining any exclusive contract relating to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app,” Judge Mehta’s 230-page ruling reads. “Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment.”

One year ago, Judge Mehta determined that Google owned an illegal monopoly in online search and that it was violating the Sherman Act by engaging in exclusionary contracts with partners like Apple to maintain and expand this monopoly. Since then, the judge has held remedy hearings in which Google and the DOJ and U.S. states allied against it weighed in with potential resolutions. And Judge Mehta said early on that he would need one year to issue his final ruling.

Well, it took a bit more than a year. But here are the key points in Judge Mehta’s ruling.

No more exclusive contracts. Google cannot enter into or maintain any contracts that give it exclusive access to the distribution of Search, Chrome, Assistant, or Gemini.

Google can keep Chrome. Google will not be forced to divest itself of the Chrome web browser as requested by the DOJ. Judge Mehta referred to this request as “an overreach.”

Google can keep Android. The DOJ also requested that Google be forced to divest itself of the Android mobile platform if its antitrust abuses continued unabated after Judge Mehta’s final ruling. Mehta noted, however, that Google had never used Android “to effect any illegal restraints.”

Google will not be barred from entering into pay for play agreements. In what will surely emerge as the most controversial part of this ruling, Google will not be barred from paying partners like Apple and Mozilla to distribute its search engine as the default in their products. “Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial—in some cases, crippling—downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban,” Mehta said.

Google has to share search data with competitors. To level the playing field, Google is required to to provide “certain search index and user-interaction data, though not ads data” with competitors to deny the monopolist “the fruits of its exclusionary acts and promote competition.”

Google must share search and search text advertising services with competitors. Similarly, Google must help competitors deliver high–quality search results and ads so that they can better compete with the company while they develop their own systems.

Google will not be required to display “choice” screens in Android. Judge Mehta is not interested in overseeing Google product designs, and because so-called ballot screens have never been provably effective, he will not require Google to modify Android to display UIs that give users choices between Google and third party apps and services.

With the understanding that this could still change, it appears that the biggest surprises in this ruling are that the judge rejected the DOJ’s structural relief suggestions while he will continue allowing Google to pay Apple over $20 billion per year to be the default search engine on the iPhone. But it is somewhat fascinating that Judge Mehta also considered how the market has changed since his ruling, especially with AI.

Essentially, Judge Mehta seems to be saying that the DOJ’s structural demands—forcing it to spin off Chrome and then maybe Android, too—were too radical and that the market may simply adjust to restore competition.

“There would be nothing ‘natural‘ about a Chrome divesture,” he wrote. “It would be incredibly messy and highly risky … the court is highly skeptical that a Chrome divestiture would not come at the expense of substantial product degradation and a loss of consumer welfare … That concern extends to the Chromium open-source project and other Chrome-based products.”

As for Google’s payments to Apple, Mozilla, Samsung, and others, Mehta ruled that while the resulting revenues are indeed a “fruit” of Google’s illegal conduct, he declined to impose a payment ban at this time.

“The remedy would pose a substantial risk of harm to OEMs, carriers, and browser developers,” the ruling notes even though that falls outside of concerns about Google’s illegal behavior. “[It] would not promote competition and in fact would likely advantage Google, at least in the short term [because there is no viable competition.” In other words, Apple will still choose Google Search as the default even if Google didn’t pay for that because it’s still the best choice. But Google could use the resulting savings to further its abuses.

“For now, Google will be permitted to pay distributors for default placement,” Mehta writes. “There are strong reasons not to jolt the system and to allow market forces to do the work. Still, ‘judges must be open to clarifying and reconsidering their decrees in light of changing’—or unchanging—’market realities’. The court is thus prepared to revisit a payment ban (or a lesser remedy) if competition is not substantially restored through the remedies the court does impose.”

Given the length of the ruling and the complexities of antitrust, I will need additional time to fully absorb the remedies that Judge Mehta is imposing on Google. But if my initial take is correct, Google would be well served by dropping its appeal and accepting this ruling: It appears to have gotten off easier than most expected, and the impositions imposed upon it seem mild at best.