US District Judge Amit Mehta has yet to decide how to punish Google for maintaining an illegal monopoly on internet searches, but experts say there could be big changes ahead. "The court will have to decide whether Google should be broken up in some way," Loyola University Chicago School of Law professor Spencer Weber Waller tells USA Today. "More likely, it will order Google to eliminate the exclusive contracts and licensing restrictions that have reinforced its monopoly position for years." Mehta found Google paid companies billions of dollars a year to make its search engine the default on devices, throttling competition.
Studies show people rarely switch from the default browser. And more search queries mean more data is collected and harnessed to improve results. Some antitrust experts have suggested Google should now be forced to share its search data with competitors. Some even propose "splitting off Google's Chrome browser or its Android mobile operating system," per the New York Times. But the outlet suggests Mehta, whose decision was influenced by the 2000 ruling that Microsoft abused the monopoly power of its Windows operating system, might take inspiration from the penalties handed out in that case.
Found to have illegally excluded rival Netscape through deals with PC makers, Microsoft "was prohibited from forcing restrictive contracts on its industry partners and ordered to open some of its technology to outsiders," per the Times. At Yahoo, Daniel Howley predicts Mehta will at least end Google's long-standing contract with Apple—which makes Google the default search engine for the Safari browser, Spotlight Search, and Siri—potentially stripping Google of search volume worth $30 billion per year, or 15% of its annual revenue. Remedies are likely to be decided only after Google's appeal. Whatever remedies are decided will likely factor into other antitrust cases against Google, Apple, Amazon, and Meta, per the Times. (More Google stories.)
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