Google will not be forced to break up its search business, but a federal judge has tentatively ordered other changes to the tech giant’s business practices to keep it from further anticompetitive behavior.
U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta outlined remedies on Tuesday that would bar Google from entering or maintaining exclusive deals that tie the distribution of Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or Gemini to other apps or revenue arrangements. For example, Google wouldn’t be able to condition Play Store licensing on the distribution of certain apps, or tie revenue-share payments to keeping certain apps.
Google will also have to share certain search index and user-interaction data with “qualified competitors” to prevent exclusionary behavior, and it must offer search and search ad syndication services to competitors at standard rates so they can deliver quality results while building their own technology.
Mehta has not yet issued a final judgment. Instead, he ordered Google and the Department of Justice to “meet and confer” and submit a revised final judgment by September 10 that aligns with his opinion.
I am a bit confused here. Is this the ruling of the Google Search monopoly remedies trial?
Cause selling Google Search wasn’t on the table, what was was the sell of Chrome.
Edit: The Verge article explains it better.
Google will not have to sell its Chrome browser in order to address its illegal monopoly in online search, DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled on Tuesday. Over a year ago, Judge Mehta found that the search giant had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act; his ruling now determines what Google must do in response.
Besides letting Google keep Chrome, he’ll also let the company continue to pay distribution partners for preloading or placement of its search or AI products. But he did order Google to share some valuable search information with rivals that could help jumpstart their ability to compete, and bar the search giant from making exclusive deals to distribute its search or AI assistant products in ways that might cut off distribution for rivals.
I wonder what the “competitors” that Google must share search data with?
While we all can hope DDG and Brave Search can benefit from this, I think the real winners are the AI startups trying to make LLM-centered web browsers based off Chromium.
Bing from Microsoft is surely on the list… Don’t tell me that the unintended side effect of this is that our data is shared between big techs (enforced by the US government).
They said “qualified competitors” so not sure exactly, but any GSE should qualify. AI companies probably if they already have a search business like ChatGPT. Details will be ironed out between Google and DOJ this month (per TechCrunch article)
There will be no private data shared, only public data or fairly generic stuff.
Mere window dressing I’m afraid. Corporate gobble-d-gook.
Surely the real concern for privacy and security advocates is the open channel of user data directly to the US’s three letter agencies.
I really don’t care who gets the revenue dollars from my, limited, web search’s. I use Startpage with Brave anyway.