Judge finalizes relief in Google antitrust case

A U.S. judge on Friday added new details to remedies resulting from the following events: Google The fallout the company faces after losing last year in an antitrust case has been finalized.

In mid-2024, Google was found to have an illegal monopoly in its core market for internet search, and in September of this year, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled against the most serious consequences proposed by the Justice Department, including forcing the sale of Google’s Chrome browser.

However, Google was ordered to loosen its hold on search data.

Mehta announced additional details of the ruling on Friday.

“The old adage ‘the devil is in the details’ may not have been conceived with antitrust relief rulings in mind, but it certainly holds true,” Mehta wrote in one of Friday’s filings.

Mehta wrote that Google cannot enter into a contract like the one it had in the past. apple “Except if the agreement is terminated within one year of the signing date.” Google pays Apple billions of dollars a year to be the default search engine in the Safari browser on iPhones, Macs, and iPads.

The judge’s ruling includes transactions involving generative artificial intelligence products and “applications, software, services, features, tools, functionality, or products” that involve or use genAI or large-scale language models.

GenAI “plays an important role in these treatments,” Mehta wrote.

Mehta on Friday also included requirements for the composition of a technical committee that would decide with whom Google must share data. The committee’s “members shall be experts in a combination of software engineering, information retrieval, artificial intelligence, economics, behavioral science, data privacy and data security,” the filing states.

The judge further said that committee members cannot have a conflict of interest, such as having worked for Google or its competitors in the six months prior to serving in the role or the year thereafter.

Mehta said the committee needs “access to Google’s source code and algorithms subject to non-disclosure agreements” and reiterated the requirement that Google share web indexing data with certain competitors.

Google will be required to share some of the raw search interaction data it uses to train its ranking and AI systems, but not the actual algorithms. Mehta said in September that these datasets represent only a “small portion” of Google’s overall traffic, but argued that the company’s models are trained on data that has contributed to Google’s advantage over its competitors.

In August 2024, Mehta ruled that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing search and related advertising. The antitrust trial began in September 2023.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company previously announced it would appeal the judge’s exclusive ruling.

WATCH: Judge offers final relief in Google antitrust case