After years of investigation and a marathon trial, the biggest antitrust case against a tech company in a generation has concluded not with a dramatic breakup, but with a series of behavioral adjustments. A US judge has ordered Google to change some of its business practices but allowed the company’s core structure, including its ownership of Chrome, to remain intact.
The remedies imposed by Judge Amit Mehta focus on modifying Google’s conduct rather than its corporate form. The company is now barred from signing exclusive search distribution deals and must share some search data with competitors. These are significant changes, yet they fall far short of the “death penalty” of divestiture that the Department of Justice had sought.
The decision was heavily influenced by the judge’s view that the tech landscape is already being reshaped by the rise of AI. This forward-looking perspective led him to conclude that less invasive remedies would suffice, as new technologies would naturally provide a competitive check on Google’s power over time.
This outcome may set the tone for the future of antitrust enforcement in the fast-moving tech sector. It signals a judicial preference for targeted, conduct-based remedies that can adapt to market changes, over the more rigid and disruptive structural remedies of the past. The era of breaking up tech giants, it seems, has not yet arrived.