US v. Google: all the news from the search antitrust showdown – The Verge

Department of Justice appeals Google search monopoly ruling

2026-02-03T17:41:14-05:00

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice and the plaintiffs in the antitrust case against Google filed a cross-appeal, as the DOJ Antitrust Division announced in a post on X: "Today, the DOJ Antitrust Division filed notice that it will cross-appeal from the remedies decisions in its case against Google's unlawful monopolization of internet search and search advertising."

Just a few weeks ago, Google itself filed a notice to appeal and requested a pause on the remedies ordered by DC District Court Judge Amit Mehta last year. Those remedies included requiring Google to share search data with its rivals and barring Google from making exclusive d …

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Google is appealing a judge’s search monopoly ruling

2026-01-16T20:24:25-05:00

Google is appealing a federal court's decision ruling it an illegal online search monopolist. The company filed a notice to appeal on Friday, requesting a pause on the court-ordered remedies meant to restore competition to the online search market.

"As we have long said, the Court's August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that people use Google because they want to, not because they're forced to," Google's vice president of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, said in a blog post. "The decision failed to account for the rapid pace of innovation and intense competition we face from established players and well-funded start-ups. And it di …

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Google fights to prevent search remedies from inhibiting its AI ambitions

2025-10-09T09:57:14-04:00

A court order will require Google to scale back some of its more aggressive tactics to get its search engine in front of as many users as possible, but it's still fighting to make sure new restrictions won't limit its AI expansion.

At a hearing in a federal courthouse in DC on Wednesday, Google attorney John Schmidtlein told Judge Amit Mehta that he should not prevent the company from bundling its Gemini AI app with other Google apps like YouTube and Maps, Bloomberg reported. Mehta expressed concern that requiring manufacturers to install its AI app in order to access Maps and YouTube would give Google "leverage" to better position Gemini, …

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Silicon Valley’s most powerful alliance just got stronger

2025-09-05T19:05:54-04:00

Eddy Cue deserves a raise.

As the executive overseeing Apple's services division, he's highly incentivized to protect the tens of billions of dollars a year that Google pays to be the default search engine in Safari. "I've lost a lot of sleep thinking about it," he said from the witness stand during Google's antitrust trial earlier this year.

Luckily for Cue, his court testimony appears to have had a significant impact on Judge Amit Mehta, who ruled this week that Google's default payments to Apple and others can continue. You can see Cue's arguments at trial mirrored in Mehta's ruling: the Apple SVP said it would be "crazy" to punish th …

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The tech antitrust renaissance may already be over

2025-09-04T16:42:14-04:00

Around six years ago, a new rallying cry rippled through Washington: "Break Up Big Tech."

It was a slogan emblazoned on campaign posters, uttered at congressional hearings, and beginning, it seemed, to echo through the halls of the nation's antitrust enforcers. Momentum in the legislatures eventually petered out, but the enforcers at the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission remained more active than ever. President Joe Biden never took the kind of hard posture on Big Tech that political rivals like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) or Bernie Sanders (I-VT) adopted, but nevertheless, when he became president in 2021, he tapped Lina K …

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Google critics think the search remedies ruling is a total whiff

2025-09-03T08:06:59-04:00

The remedies ruling in the Department of Justice's antitrust case against Google finally landed on Tuesday. Last year, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google was a monopolist in the search and advertising markets, but while today's ruling says that Google will have to share some search data with competitors, Google doesn't have to spin off Chrome and it can keep paying for deals like the one that lets it be the default search in Safari.

Many Google critics aren't happy with the remedies that have been handed down, saying that they don't go far enough to slow Google's dominance and restore competition in the market. Here are some statements from …

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Google gets to keep Chrome, judge rules in search antitrust case

2025-09-02T19:27:46-04:00

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.

Mehta declined to grant some of the more ambitious proposals from the Justice Department to remedy Google's behavior and restore competition to the market. 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 …

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Inside the courthouse reshaping the future of the internet

2025-10-06T16:02:21-04:00

The E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington, DC.

The future of the internet will be determined in one building in Washington, DC - and for six weeks, I watched it unfold.

For much of this spring, the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in downtown Washington, DC, was buzzing with lawyers, reporters, and interested onlookers jostling between dimly lit courtrooms that hosted everyone from the richest men in Silicon Valley to fired federal workers and the DOGE-aligned officials who terminated them. The sprawling courthouse, with an airy atrium in the middle and long, dark halls that spring from it, is where cases involving government agencies often land, and that meant it was hosting two of the …

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Google rejected giving publishers more choice to opt out of AI Search

2025-05-21T14:19:50-04:00

Publishers have to opt out of Search entirely to avoid their content being used in AI Overviews.

Google didn't want to give publishers the choice to keep their content out of AI Search results because it's "evolving into a space for monetisation." That's according to a newly disclosed internal document, spotted by Bloomberg, which reveals that Google had discussed offering publishers more granular control over how website data would be used in AI Search features instead of the illusion of choice they eventually received.

The document, written by Google Search executive Chetna Bindra, was released during the US antitrust trial into Google's online search monopoly. The access to its search engine data gives Google a huge advantage in AI …

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Eddy Cue is fighting to save Apple’s $20 billion paycheck from Google

2025-05-07T17:40:34-04:00

Microsoft's Bing or DuckDuckGo probably won't disrupt Google's dominance in search, said Apple senior vice president of services Eddy Cue - but AI services easily could.

Cue was returning to a courtroom in Washington, DC where he last testified in the Justice Department's trial against Google's search monopoly in September 2023. During the current remedies trial on Wednesday, Cue said that in the time since, well-funded generative AI upstarts have made such significant advancements that they could ultimately disrupt that monopoly - perhaps more effectively than the court could.

Cue was also, however, there to defend a significant source o …

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