A federal judge has expanded on remedies for the Department of Defense’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, ruling in favor of a one-year limit on agreements that make Google’s search and AI services the default on devices. Bloomberg Report Friday Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling means Google will have to renegotiate these contacts every year, creating a fair playing field for its competitors. The new details come after Mehta ruled in September that Google would not have to sell Chrome until the end of 2024, as the DOJ had suggested.
The judge placed a one-year limit
It all follows last fall’s ruling that Google illegally maintained an Internet search monopoly that included paying companies like Apple to make its search engine the default on their devices and making exclusive deals around the distribution of services like Search, Chrome and Gemini. Mehta’s September ruling ended the monopoly agreement and stipulated that Google must share some of its search data with rivals, creating actions to “narrow the scale gap.”