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AI rewrote the Google antitrust case
| From | Project Liberty <[email protected]> |
| Subject | AI rewrote the Google antitrust case |
| Date | September 9, 2025 3:55 PM |
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Google is a monopoly, but it escaped the harshest penalties. The reason? The rise of AI competition.
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September 9th, 2025 // Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up to receive your own copy here. ([link removed] )
AI rewrote the Google antitrust case
What a difference a year makes.
One year ago, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta issued a landmark ruling: Google was a monopolist ([link removed] ) .
It was the most consequential antitrust decision in decades. The penalties had the potential to remake the internet as we know it, from the breaking up of Google to the forced sale of its Chrome browser and the sundering of ties between Google and Apple, who had been found to collude to preload Google products onto Apple devices.
At the time, some experts ([link removed] ) predicted the ruling would not only change the internet but could usher in a new era of ambitious tech policy.
“This is the most important antitrust case of the century, and it’s the first of a big slate of cases to come down against Big Tech,” Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt University’s law school who studies antitrust, said last year ([link removed] ) . “It’s a huge turning point.”
Last week, Judge Mehta, from the District Court for the District of Columbia, delivered his final decision. In a 223-page ruling, the court imposed lighter penalties than many had anticipated, stopping short of a breakup or a forced sale of Chrome.
Google was officially ruled a monopolist, but it will not face the most severe structural remedies sought by the Department of Justice.
The main reason? Artificial Intelligence was reshaping the competitive landscape. The new technology “changed the course of this case,” Judge Mehta wrote. The antitrust ruling itself wasn’t the turning point; rather, it was the pace of technological change.
In this newsletter, we explore the latest ruling, what it means for tech policy, and why AI changed everything.
// The case against Google
The US Justice Department sued Google in 2020 ([link removed] ) (along with 35 US states ([link removed] ) ), claiming that the tech giant engaged in monopolistic practices to maintain its search engine dominance (Google conducts nearly 90% of all web searches globally).
The lawsuit alleged that such market share was possible because Google made average annual payments of around $10 billion ([link removed] ) over the last 13 years to firms like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla to be their default search engine on devices and browsers. In 2021 alone, Google paid $26 billion ([link removed] ) to be the default search engine on mobile phones and web browsers.
Last summer, Judge Mehta’s ruling reverberated through Washington and Silicon Valley. Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly ([link removed] ) through its business model and exclusive deals with other tech giants like Apple.
// The remedies
Following the August 2024 ruling, Judge Mehta presided over a “remedy trial” in April of this year, which examined potential remedies that Google might face. The Department of Justice proposed that Google should be dismantled. Ultimately, the Judge chose lighter penalties, which will last six years:
- Google can no longer enter exclusive agreements with companies like Apple that make it the default search engine on devices and browsers. Google is still allowed to pay companies to help distribute its products, and many tech companies are exploring similar partnerships. For example, last year, Apple struck a deal with OpenAI ([link removed] ) to integrate ChatGPT onto its devices.
- Google must share search data with its competitors. Borrowing precedent from the EU’s Digital Markets Act ([link removed] ) , the ruling concluded that data sharing with “qualified competitors” was necessary to dilute Google’s market advantage in paying to be the default search engine on devices and browsers. (It remains unclear how user data would be protected.)
- Google must allow competitors to access its search ad syndication services (how Google provides search results to outside websites) at standard rates, so rivals aren’t disadvantaged in delivering high-quality search experiences.
“Notwithstanding this power, courts must approach the task of crafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility,” Judge Mehta wrote ([link removed] ) in last week’s decision. “This court has done so.”
Not everyone agrees with this statement; Nidhi Hegde, Executive Director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said ([link removed] ) , “You don’t find someone guilty of robbing a bank and then sentence him to writing a thank you note for the loot. Similarly, you don’t find Google liable for monopolization and then write a remedy that lets it protect its monopoly. This feckless remedy to the most storied case of monopolization of the past quarter century is a complete failure of his duty and must be appealed.”
The Department of Justice drew more optimistic conclusions. “Make no mistake: the relief ordered so far is a major win for the American people,” Gail Slater, the head of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, posted on the social platform X ([link removed] ) : “While the court didn’t order every form of relief the United States sought, it ordered far more significant remedies than Google believed appropriate,” she said.
// The tech policy implications
Antitrust experts saw the original ruling a turning point in the government’s attempt to rein in Big Tech. Now, the light penalties could serve as a warning sign for other cases brought against Big Tech (like the Federal Trade Commission’s ongoing case ([link removed] ) against Meta, which alleges that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp created anticompetitive power).
“Our antitrust law is focused on harm and not power,” said Daniel Francis ([link removed] ?) , an antitrust expert at New York University School of Law. To successfully prosecute Big Tech companies like Google and Meta, the federal government has to prove that the consumer was harmed.
Judge Mehta also made another point that the government “overreached” in seeking the forced divestiture of Google’s assets, like the Chrome browser. For future tech policy, the lesson is clear: Antitrust remedies must specifically address anticompetitive practices, rather than attempting to re-engineer entire markets. In tech policy, precision matters.
// The role of AI
“For the Big Tech firms, this ruling is a relief,” David Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, said ([link removed] ) . But for Google, the relief is limited. Its dominance in search and browsers is already under pressure from a new wave of rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity. In a twist of irony, it was precisely this rising competition that Judge Mehta pointed to in justifying a lighter penalty.
To defend itself in court, Google acknowledged how the competitive landscape has changed. It noted that the volume of Google search queries on Apple’s Safari browser declined for the first time in 22 years ([link removed] ) .
“There are strong reasons not to jolt the system and to allow market forces to do the work,” Judge Mehta said. “Unlike the typical case where the court's job is to resolve a dispute based on historic facts, here the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future. Not exactly a judge's forte.”
That future is changing rapidly; OpenAI’s ChatGPT recently hit 700 million weekly users ([link removed] ) , and other challengers brandishing AI search tools are coming for Google’s search engine and browser dominance.
// The pace of tech disruption
The lawsuit against Google is the first case against a modern tech giant to go from filing (in 2020) to remedies (in 2025). The dynamics that cemented Google’s search dominance in 2020 look very different today. As AI tools race to become the primary interface for how we interact with the web, it is not a question of whether new monopolies will emerge but how quickly. The leading firms are already building walled gardens—locking up data, distribution channels, and user attention in ways that could prove even harder to break open than Google’s search empire.
Antitrust regulation and tech policy are necessary but not sufficient to transform the web. They need to be complemented with less reactive forms of digital governance.
This is why Project Liberty is focused on the governance level of the internet—seeking to shift the fundamental architecture of the web to distribute power and control away from tech giants and into the hands of people.
It’s an approach that many are committed to, including Omidyar Network CEO Mike Kubzansky. “For consumers, the remedies offered will mean very little change,” he said in a press release ([link removed] ) . “The time for incremental tweaks has passed; we need structural solutions that put people back at the center of our digital future.”
In the coming weeks, we will explore what Project Liberty is doing in the AI era, and how new models of digital governance can give individuals the control they need as AI tools become an individual’s default interface with the web.
📰 Other notable headlines
// 🏥 In China and around the world, the sick and lonely turn to AI for help, according to an article in Rest of World ([link removed] ) . (Free).
// 🤔 An article in The Wall Street Journal ([link removed] ) featured the peculiar story of how ChatGPT fueled a 56-year-old tech industry veteran’s paranoia, encouraging his suspicions that his mother was plotting against him. (Paywall).
// 🙏 As concerns grow about AI chatbots leading users into delusional spirals, prominent spiritual influencers are capitalizing on an emerging form of techno-spirituality, according to an article in WIRED ([link removed] ) . (Paywall).
// 📱 An essay in Noema Magazine ([link removed] ) argued that social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion. (Free).
// 🗣 Can an AI doppelgänger help me do my job? To some people, digital clones are the future of influence and productivity, according to an article in MIT Technology Review ([link removed] ) . (Paywall).
// 🇪🇺 An article in The New York Times ([link removed] ) reported on Google's fine of $3.5 billion for breaking Europe’s antitrust laws. (Paywall).
// 🏫 I’m a high schooler. AI is demolishing my education. An op-ed in The Atlantic ([link removed] ) considered whether we’re at the end of critical thinking in the classroom. (Paywall).
Partner news
// NewsGuard releases first public audit of top AI chatbots
NewsGuard ([link removed] ) has published its first report naming and scoring the leading 10 large language model chatbots, including ChatGPT-5, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot. The audit examines how these tools respond to false claims in the news, offering policymakers, journalists, and the public new insights into AI reliability and risks. Read the report here ([link removed] ) .
// FLI launches $100K+ creative contest
Deadline: November 30, 2025
The Future of Life Institute ([link removed] ) (FLI) has opened submissions for its Keep The Future Human Creative Contest. The contest is open to individuals and teams of all ages. It will award more than $100,000 in prizes for work that engages with AI safety and inspires positive action. Register here ([link removed] ) .
// Ask the experts webinar featuring an FTC director
Join the Institute of Digital Media and Child Development ([link removed] ) for their next Ask the Experts webinar, Hidden Costs: Protecting Kids from Online Financial Exploitation, featuring the Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Register here ([link removed] ) .
What did you think of today's newsletter?
We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. Reply to this email.
// Project Liberty builds solutions that help people take back control of their lives in the digital age by reclaiming a voice, choice, and stake in a better internet.
Thank you for reading.
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10 Hudson Yards, Fl 37,
New York, New York, 10001
Unsubscribe ([link removed] ) Manage Preferences ([link removed] )
© 2025 Project Liberty LLC
View in browser ([link removed] )
September 9th, 2025 // Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up to receive your own copy here. ([link removed] )
AI rewrote the Google antitrust case
What a difference a year makes.
One year ago, U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta issued a landmark ruling: Google was a monopolist ([link removed] ) .
It was the most consequential antitrust decision in decades. The penalties had the potential to remake the internet as we know it, from the breaking up of Google to the forced sale of its Chrome browser and the sundering of ties between Google and Apple, who had been found to collude to preload Google products onto Apple devices.
At the time, some experts ([link removed] ) predicted the ruling would not only change the internet but could usher in a new era of ambitious tech policy.
“This is the most important antitrust case of the century, and it’s the first of a big slate of cases to come down against Big Tech,” Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt University’s law school who studies antitrust, said last year ([link removed] ) . “It’s a huge turning point.”
Last week, Judge Mehta, from the District Court for the District of Columbia, delivered his final decision. In a 223-page ruling, the court imposed lighter penalties than many had anticipated, stopping short of a breakup or a forced sale of Chrome.
Google was officially ruled a monopolist, but it will not face the most severe structural remedies sought by the Department of Justice.
The main reason? Artificial Intelligence was reshaping the competitive landscape. The new technology “changed the course of this case,” Judge Mehta wrote. The antitrust ruling itself wasn’t the turning point; rather, it was the pace of technological change.
In this newsletter, we explore the latest ruling, what it means for tech policy, and why AI changed everything.
// The case against Google
The US Justice Department sued Google in 2020 ([link removed] ) (along with 35 US states ([link removed] ) ), claiming that the tech giant engaged in monopolistic practices to maintain its search engine dominance (Google conducts nearly 90% of all web searches globally).
The lawsuit alleged that such market share was possible because Google made average annual payments of around $10 billion ([link removed] ) over the last 13 years to firms like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla to be their default search engine on devices and browsers. In 2021 alone, Google paid $26 billion ([link removed] ) to be the default search engine on mobile phones and web browsers.
Last summer, Judge Mehta’s ruling reverberated through Washington and Silicon Valley. Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly ([link removed] ) through its business model and exclusive deals with other tech giants like Apple.
// The remedies
Following the August 2024 ruling, Judge Mehta presided over a “remedy trial” in April of this year, which examined potential remedies that Google might face. The Department of Justice proposed that Google should be dismantled. Ultimately, the Judge chose lighter penalties, which will last six years:
- Google can no longer enter exclusive agreements with companies like Apple that make it the default search engine on devices and browsers. Google is still allowed to pay companies to help distribute its products, and many tech companies are exploring similar partnerships. For example, last year, Apple struck a deal with OpenAI ([link removed] ) to integrate ChatGPT onto its devices.
- Google must share search data with its competitors. Borrowing precedent from the EU’s Digital Markets Act ([link removed] ) , the ruling concluded that data sharing with “qualified competitors” was necessary to dilute Google’s market advantage in paying to be the default search engine on devices and browsers. (It remains unclear how user data would be protected.)
- Google must allow competitors to access its search ad syndication services (how Google provides search results to outside websites) at standard rates, so rivals aren’t disadvantaged in delivering high-quality search experiences.
“Notwithstanding this power, courts must approach the task of crafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility,” Judge Mehta wrote ([link removed] ) in last week’s decision. “This court has done so.”
Not everyone agrees with this statement; Nidhi Hegde, Executive Director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said ([link removed] ) , “You don’t find someone guilty of robbing a bank and then sentence him to writing a thank you note for the loot. Similarly, you don’t find Google liable for monopolization and then write a remedy that lets it protect its monopoly. This feckless remedy to the most storied case of monopolization of the past quarter century is a complete failure of his duty and must be appealed.”
The Department of Justice drew more optimistic conclusions. “Make no mistake: the relief ordered so far is a major win for the American people,” Gail Slater, the head of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, posted on the social platform X ([link removed] ) : “While the court didn’t order every form of relief the United States sought, it ordered far more significant remedies than Google believed appropriate,” she said.
// The tech policy implications
Antitrust experts saw the original ruling a turning point in the government’s attempt to rein in Big Tech. Now, the light penalties could serve as a warning sign for other cases brought against Big Tech (like the Federal Trade Commission’s ongoing case ([link removed] ) against Meta, which alleges that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp created anticompetitive power).
“Our antitrust law is focused on harm and not power,” said Daniel Francis ([link removed] ?) , an antitrust expert at New York University School of Law. To successfully prosecute Big Tech companies like Google and Meta, the federal government has to prove that the consumer was harmed.
Judge Mehta also made another point that the government “overreached” in seeking the forced divestiture of Google’s assets, like the Chrome browser. For future tech policy, the lesson is clear: Antitrust remedies must specifically address anticompetitive practices, rather than attempting to re-engineer entire markets. In tech policy, precision matters.
// The role of AI
“For the Big Tech firms, this ruling is a relief,” David Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School, said ([link removed] ) . But for Google, the relief is limited. Its dominance in search and browsers is already under pressure from a new wave of rivals like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity. In a twist of irony, it was precisely this rising competition that Judge Mehta pointed to in justifying a lighter penalty.
To defend itself in court, Google acknowledged how the competitive landscape has changed. It noted that the volume of Google search queries on Apple’s Safari browser declined for the first time in 22 years ([link removed] ) .
“There are strong reasons not to jolt the system and to allow market forces to do the work,” Judge Mehta said. “Unlike the typical case where the court's job is to resolve a dispute based on historic facts, here the court is asked to gaze into a crystal ball and look to the future. Not exactly a judge's forte.”
That future is changing rapidly; OpenAI’s ChatGPT recently hit 700 million weekly users ([link removed] ) , and other challengers brandishing AI search tools are coming for Google’s search engine and browser dominance.
// The pace of tech disruption
The lawsuit against Google is the first case against a modern tech giant to go from filing (in 2020) to remedies (in 2025). The dynamics that cemented Google’s search dominance in 2020 look very different today. As AI tools race to become the primary interface for how we interact with the web, it is not a question of whether new monopolies will emerge but how quickly. The leading firms are already building walled gardens—locking up data, distribution channels, and user attention in ways that could prove even harder to break open than Google’s search empire.
Antitrust regulation and tech policy are necessary but not sufficient to transform the web. They need to be complemented with less reactive forms of digital governance.
This is why Project Liberty is focused on the governance level of the internet—seeking to shift the fundamental architecture of the web to distribute power and control away from tech giants and into the hands of people.
It’s an approach that many are committed to, including Omidyar Network CEO Mike Kubzansky. “For consumers, the remedies offered will mean very little change,” he said in a press release ([link removed] ) . “The time for incremental tweaks has passed; we need structural solutions that put people back at the center of our digital future.”
In the coming weeks, we will explore what Project Liberty is doing in the AI era, and how new models of digital governance can give individuals the control they need as AI tools become an individual’s default interface with the web.
📰 Other notable headlines
// 🏥 In China and around the world, the sick and lonely turn to AI for help, according to an article in Rest of World ([link removed] ) . (Free).
// 🤔 An article in The Wall Street Journal ([link removed] ) featured the peculiar story of how ChatGPT fueled a 56-year-old tech industry veteran’s paranoia, encouraging his suspicions that his mother was plotting against him. (Paywall).
// 🙏 As concerns grow about AI chatbots leading users into delusional spirals, prominent spiritual influencers are capitalizing on an emerging form of techno-spirituality, according to an article in WIRED ([link removed] ) . (Paywall).
// 📱 An essay in Noema Magazine ([link removed] ) argued that social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion. (Free).
// 🗣 Can an AI doppelgänger help me do my job? To some people, digital clones are the future of influence and productivity, according to an article in MIT Technology Review ([link removed] ) . (Paywall).
// 🇪🇺 An article in The New York Times ([link removed] ) reported on Google's fine of $3.5 billion for breaking Europe’s antitrust laws. (Paywall).
// 🏫 I’m a high schooler. AI is demolishing my education. An op-ed in The Atlantic ([link removed] ) considered whether we’re at the end of critical thinking in the classroom. (Paywall).
Partner news
// NewsGuard releases first public audit of top AI chatbots
NewsGuard ([link removed] ) has published its first report naming and scoring the leading 10 large language model chatbots, including ChatGPT-5, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot. The audit examines how these tools respond to false claims in the news, offering policymakers, journalists, and the public new insights into AI reliability and risks. Read the report here ([link removed] ) .
// FLI launches $100K+ creative contest
Deadline: November 30, 2025
The Future of Life Institute ([link removed] ) (FLI) has opened submissions for its Keep The Future Human Creative Contest. The contest is open to individuals and teams of all ages. It will award more than $100,000 in prizes for work that engages with AI safety and inspires positive action. Register here ([link removed] ) .
// Ask the experts webinar featuring an FTC director
Join the Institute of Digital Media and Child Development ([link removed] ) for their next Ask the Experts webinar, Hidden Costs: Protecting Kids from Online Financial Exploitation, featuring the Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Register here ([link removed] ) .
What did you think of today's newsletter?
We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. Reply to this email.
// Project Liberty builds solutions that help people take back control of their lives in the digital age by reclaiming a voice, choice, and stake in a better internet.
Thank you for reading.
Facebook ([link removed] )
LinkedIn ([link removed] )
Sin título-3_Mesa de trabajo 1 ([link removed] )
Instagram ([link removed] )
Project Liberty footer logo ([link removed] )
10 Hudson Yards, Fl 37,
New York, New York, 10001
Unsubscribe ([link removed] ) Manage Preferences ([link removed] )
© 2025 Project Liberty LLC
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