On September 2, 2025, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) commented on US District Court Judge Amit P Mehta’s Order containing several remedies and referred to it as “an important step forward in the Department of Justice’s ongoing fight to protect American consumers”.  

More specifically, Google was ordered to not from enter or maintain exclusive contracts relating to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app, and not enter or maintain agreements that:

• condition the licensing of any Google application on the distribution, preloading, or placement of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app anywhere on a device

  
  

• condition the receipt of revenue share payments for the placement of one Google application on the placement of another Google application

  
  

• condition the receipt of revenue share payments on maintaining Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app on any device, browser, or search access point for more than one year, or

  
  

• prohibit any partner from simultaneously distributing any other GSE, browser, or GenAI product

In addition, Google will have to make certain search index and user-interaction data available to certain competitors and offer certain competitors search and search text ads syndication services, which will open up the market by enabling rivals and potential rivals to deliver high-quality search results and ads and compete with Google as they develop their own capacity.

These remedies had to do with the previous decision that Google abused its monopoly power, which I wrote about here. What is missing here? Google was not ordered to break up the company.

Nonetheless, the DOJ stated:

“For years, Google accounted for approximately 90 percent of all search queries in the United States, and Google used anticompetitive tactics to maintain and extend its monopolies in search and search advertising. Google entered into a series of exclusionary agreements that collectively locked up the primary avenues through which users access online search, requiring that Google be the preset default general search engine on billions of mobile devices and computers and, in many cases, prohibiting preinstallation of a competitor. Using its monopoly profits, Google bought preferential treatment for its search engine and created a self-reinforcing cycle of monopolization — shutting out potential competitors, reducing innovation, and taking choice away from American consumers”

Abigail Slater, the Attorney General and spokesperson for the DOJ, stated in a post on X:

“We proved in court that competition had been frozen in place for two decades in internet search. Google’s tactics have excluded competition, harming consumers and slowing innovation. Today’s remedy order agreed with the need to restore competition to the long-monopolized search market, and we are now weighing our options and thinking through whether the ordered relief goes far enough in serving that goal”

What was Google’s Reaction to the Order?

On the same day as the Order, Google posted its reaction:

“Today’s decision recognizes how much the industry has changed through the advent of AI, which is giving people so many more ways to find information. This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want. That’s why we disagree so strongly with the Court’s initial decision in August 2024 on liability.

Now the Court has imposed limits on how we distribute Google services, and will require us to share Search data with rivals. We have concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely. The Court did recognize that divesting Chrome and Android would have gone beyond the case’s focus on search distribution, and would have harmed consumers and our partners

As always, we’re continuing to focus on what matters — building innovative products that people choose and love”

It appears that there was no acknowledgement by Google of the significant findings in Google’s abuse of monopoly power decision, or how lucky the company was for not having to break up or be forced to sell off its Android operating system.

Apparently, shares in Alphabet, Google's parent company, jumped by more than eight percent after the ruling.

This may be because going forward, phone manufacturers will be free to pre-load or promote other search engines, browsers or AI assistants alongside Google's. Tech companies will also benefit from the Order since Google will be able to continue paying distributors for default placement.

In other news, Google was fined €2.95 billion by European Commission over abusive practices in online advertising technology

A couple of days after the US antitrust remedies Order against Google, the European Commission fined Google €2.95 billion over abusive practices in online advertising technology.

More specifically, Google was fined €2.95 billion for breaching EU antitrust rules by distorting competition in the advertising technology industry (AdTech). It did so by favouring its own online display advertising technology services to the detriment of competing providers of advertising technology services, advertisers, and online publishers. The Commission has ordered Google to:

• bring these self-preferencing practices to an end, and

  
  

• to implement measures to cease its inherent conflicts of interest along the AdTech supply chain

Google has 60 days to inform the Commission about how it intends to do so.

What happened?

Google sells advertising on its own websites and applications and intermediates between advertisers that want to place their ads online and publishers (i.e. third-party, websites and apps) that can supply that space.

Advertisers and publishers rely on the AdTech industry's digital tools for the placement of real-time ads not linked to a search query, such as banner ads in websites of newspapers (display ads). In particular, the AdTech industry provides three digital tools:

• publisher ad servers used by publishers to manage the advertising space on their websites and apps

  
  

• programmatic ad buying tools for the open web used by advertisers to manage their automated advertising campaigns

  
  

• ad exchanges where demand and supply meet in real time, typically via auctions, to buy and sell display adds.

Google provides several AdTech services that intermediate between advertisers and publishers to display ads on websites or mobile apps. It operates:

• two ad buying tools, namely Google Ads and DV 360

  
  

• a publisher ad server, DoubleClick For Publishers (DFP), and

  
  

• an ad exchange, AdX

The Commission investigated and found that Google is dominant:

• in the market for publisher ad servers with its service DFP

  
  

• in the market for programmatic ad buying tools for the open web with its services Google Ads and DV360

Both markets referred to above are European Economic Area-wide.

The Commission found that, between at least 2014 and today, Google abused such dominant positions in breach of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union by:

• Favouring its own ad exchange AdX in the ad selection process run by its dominant publisher ad server DFP by, for example, informing AdX in advance of the value of the best bid from competitors which it had to beat to win the auction

  
  

• Favouring its ad exchange AdX in the way its ad buying tools Google Ads and DV360 place bids on ad exchanges. For example, Google Ads was avoiding competing ad exchanges and mainly placing bids on AdX, thus making it the most attractive ad exchange

The Commission concluded that those conducts aimed at intentionally giving AdX a competitive advantage and may have foreclosed ad exchanges competing with AdX. This has reinforced AdX's central role in the adtech supply chain as well as Google's ability to charge a high fee for its service.

Therefore, the Commission ordered Google to bring these self-preferencing practices to an end. It has also ordered Google to implement measures to cease its inherent conflicts of interest along the AdTech supply chain.

Google has 60 days to inform the Commission about the measures it intends to propose to that effect. Once received, the Commission will thoroughly assess them to see if they eliminate the conflicts of interest. Should they not, subject to Google's right to be heard, the Commission will proceed to impose an appropriate remedy. The Commission has already signaled its preliminary view that only the divestment by Google of part of its services would address the situation of inherent conflicts of interest, but it first wishes to hear and assess Google's proposal.

What can we take from these decisions?

Although the US DOJ has been relatively lenient on Google with its Order that does not require Google to break up, we can see that the EU Commission is harsher with its €2.95 billion fine and Order to bring the self-preferencing practices to an end and implement measures to cease its inherent conflicts of interest along the AdTech supply chain. What’s more, Google has 60 days to come up with a reasonable plan to carry out the remedy, or else the Commission will come up with its own.

This demonstrates that there are different approaches in the US and in the EU when it comes to anti-competition law enforcement. It also begs the question about whether Google will be able to learn from past missteps and court decisions when there seems to be a lack of accountability and remorse for its actions.