Google does not have to sell its very popular Chrome web browser, but it cannot engage in exclusive research agreements, on Tuesday judged the American district judge Amit Mehta. Google must share limited research data and user interaction data with “skilled competitors”, but the company does not have to share its most precious announcements.
This appeal is a long -awaited moment after a historic antitrust case of 2020 against Google of the Ministry of Justice, in which a federal court ruled that the Internet giant illegally maintained domination in online research. He did this by giving expensive contracts with companies like Apple, Mozilla and Samsung who made Google the default research platform on various services and devices.
The Ministry of Justice has argued that a potential use of the case would force Google to sell its Chrome web browser, which currently maintains 69% global market share, according to Globalstats. Chrome gives Google valuable user data he uses to improve research and better concentrate online advertising.
“Google will not be required to disintegrate Chrome; the Court will not include a contingent disinvestment of the Android operating system in the final judgment”, according to the decision. “The applicants overestimated in the search for forced disinvestment of these key assets, which Google did not use to perform illegal constraints.”
In addition, Google cannot establish exclusive contracts for research, chrome, Google assistant or gemini, but the company can always pay for applications to be preloaded. Regarding Android, Google also does not have to sell its mobile operating system. The decision said: “The complainants overestimated by asking for a forced divestment of these key assets”.
“The court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google Services and we will force to share research data with competitors. We are concerned about the way these requirements will have an impact on our users and their privacy, and we are looking closely at the decision,” said Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice-president of Google regulatory affairs, in a blog post. “The court recognized that the disinvestment of Chrome and Android would have exceeded the emphasis on the distribution of research and would have harmed consumers and our partners.”
Mulholland also maintained the Google’s argument according to which, thanks to the advent of AI, the competition remains strong in the online information space. Admittedly, the former Googler says that Google’s late start to AI race had more to do with the fact that he did not want to usurp his basic money product, research (as well as security problems), although the company is the manufacturer of the transformer’s key technology fueling the AI ​​revolution.
The decision is a reprieve for Google because it was faced with a major restructuring of its main commercial model. Google draws most of its income from research and online advertising. Because Google Search is the most popular search engine in the world and Chrome, the most popular web browser in the world, it gives the research giant of data and user behavior, against which it sells advertising. Google also has YouTube and Android, who both have billions of users worldwide. Despite the growing popularity of AI chabots like Chatgpt, which has 700 million weekly users, Google Search is still 373 times bigger. Last year, Google Search experienced a 20% increase in research requests. Currently, Google maintains a domination of almost 90% in the online research market, according to Globalstats.
Google was also tried to maintain a monopoly in online ad sales earlier this year, although it is a separate case. Google is currently controlling the largest online advertising auction platform in the world. This decision obliges Google to “publicly disclose material changes to promote greater transparency” in advertising auctions to prevent it from secretly handling them in its favor.
Interestingly, the decision excludes Google to give publishers more choice in the way Google uses their content. Google uses the content corpus published online to not only train its Gemini AI model, but also to supply automatic results in AI previews, the results generated by AI which appear more and more at the top of the research. The publishers argued that the AI ​​previews eat in their research traffic, a Google assertion derives continuously.
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