Google faces final ruling in search antitrust case
Alphabet’s Google is bracing for the outcome of a historic antitrust trial, as final arguments are delivered in Washington on Friday.
The US Department of Justice, or DOJ, backed by a coalition of states, is pushing for structural and behavioural remedies – including forcing Google to divest its Chrome browser – in a bid to restore competition in the online search market.
The trial, overseen by US district judge Amit Mehta, marks the most consequential antitrust case against a tech company in over two decades.
It follows a ruling last year that found Google illegally maintained a monopoly in search and search advertising.
The DOJ is now asking the court to go further and ban Google’s multibillion-dollar payments to Apple and other manufacturers to remain the default search engine on new devices, require it to share valuable search data, and, most dramatically, break up its browser and search business.
Google has pushed back, arguing that the remedies proposed by the government far exceed what is legally justified.
The company maintains that forcing it to hand over proprietary data or divest from Chrome would effectively gift its technology to competitors.
Judge Meta is expected to rule on the proposed remedies by August.
AI firms could benefit from search shake-up
One of the firms eyeing the potential fallout is OpenAI, whose ChatGPT product head, Nick Turley, told the court that the company would be interested in acquiring Chrome if it were spun off.
Turley added: “OpenAI would also benefit from access to Google’s search data, which would help it make responses to user inquiries more accurate and up to date”.
The rise of AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity has already begun to challenge Google’s long standing dominance in how people find information online.
The trial’s outcome could further shift that dynamic, giving AI firms access to critical infrastructure and datasets that have so far remained tightly controlled.
The conclusion of the antitrust trial comes just weeks after Google agreed to pay $1.38bn to settle two major lawsuits with the state of Texas over privacy violations and anti-competitive conduct.
The cases accused Google of covertly collecting biometric data and tracking user locations even after location services were turned off.
The Texas settlement, the largest Google has agreed to in a data privacy case, adds to mounting legal pressure on the tech giant.
Regulators across the US and Europe are intensifying scrutiny of Big Tech’s dominance in key markets, from search to digital advertising and emerging AI tools.
The DOJ’s case is part of a broader trend toward reasserting competitive checks on platform power.
A ruling requiring Chrome’s sale would be a rare instance of structural separation in modern antitrust enforcement – and a potential inflection point in how search and browser markets are operating in the AI era.