Court rules Google not obligated to sell Chrome and Android operating systems

In a significant ruling, Judge Amit Mehta in Washington has dismissed the U.S. government's attempt to force Google to separate from its Chrome browser and Android operating system. The lawsuit, filed at the end of Donald Trump's first term as U.S. President in 2020, alleged Google's illegal monopoly in online search and advertising.

Judge Mehta's ruling addressed the consequences of finding Google's monopoly in web search. Google will still be prohibited from making exclusive deals for the distribution of its services, but can still pay other companies to pre-install or prominently feature its services. However, the judge ruled that Google must share some data from its search engine with competitors, including parts of the search engine index and information about user interactions.

The court ruling has been welcomed by Google, with its parent company Alphabet's stock rising by 6.7 percent in after-hours trading. Investor Gene Munster commented on the ruling as a victory for Google. The U.S. government, on the other hand, is considering its next steps following the court ruling.

Jonathan Kanter, who was once responsible for competition policy in the U.S. Department of Justice, saw the failure to break up Google as a victory for the company, but also a partial success for the government. He believes that the ruling will help rival search engines like Microsoft's Bing and DuckDuckGo, as well as AI companies like OpenAI and Perplexity, develop their competing products.

The data shared by Google is intended to help these competitors improve their services. In the EU, users are now explicitly asked which search engine they want to use, but the judge rejected a similar forced choice for the U.S.

The pre-installation of Google Search is a major source of income for companies like Apple and Mozilla. Apple receives billions of dollars for having Google Search pre-installed as the default on iPhones, while for Mozilla, it is a significant source of revenue for the Firefox browser. Apple's stock also rose by nearly three percent due to the court ruling.

Google had announced before the ruling that it would appeal the ruling on the monopoly case. Perplexity, a company that had expressed interest in buying Chrome if courts ordered it to be spun off, has not yet commented on the ruling. Google is concerned about the potential impact on data privacy of sharing search engine information as a result of the court ruling.

The original antitrust procedure against Google in the United States was initiated by U.S. government authorities, specifically federal antitrust enforcers such as the U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys general, as part of a five-year legal battle. The case has been closely watched by tech companies and antitrust regulators around the world.