Written by: Haim Ravia, Dotan Hammer
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia had decided the remedies phase of the antitrust case that the U.S. federal government, along with numerous states in the U.S., asserted against Google LLC. The court adopted a comprehensive six-year remedy plan aimed at restoring competition in the monopolized general search services and general search text advertising markets.
The court ordered a broad prohibitory injunction barring Google from entering or maintaining any exclusive distribution contracts related to Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app. It also ordered that distribution agreements with partners (like OEMs, carriers, and browser developers) allow an annual exit option.
However, the court rejected the most severe remedial measures proposed by the plaintiffs. It declined to impose a complete ban on Google’s revenue share payments to distributors, noting that cutting off these payments would impose a “substantial,” and in some cases, “crippling,” harm on partners and consumers, outweighing the benefit to competition.
Furthermore, the court rejected structural remedies, specifically the immediate divestiture of Chrome and the contingent divestiture of Android, finding that the plaintiffs “overreached” in their divestiture proposal and did not meet the heightened “significant causal connection” required for such drastic relief.
To address the unlawful accumulation of large-scale user data, the court mandated disclosure of narrowed datasets to certain competitors.
Additionally, Google must offer five-year licenses for search and search text ads syndication, allowing competitors a bridge to operate high-quality services while building their own capacity. Critically, this syndication must be offered on financial terms “no worse than those offered to any other user” (market rate), rather than marginal cost, to avoid distorting the search syndication market. The court also required Google to publicly disclose material changes to its ad auctions to prevent hidden price increases.
Importantly, the court also declined to mandate user-choice screens, finding they compel inappropriate judicial involvement in product design.
Click here to read the court’s decision in United States of America v. Google LLC (September 2, 2025).
