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19-01-2026
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA: Google has appealed a US district judge’s landmark antitrust ruling that found the company illegally held a monopoly in online search.
“As we have long said, the Court’s August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that people use Google because they want to, not because they’re forced to,” Google’s vice president for regulatory affairs Lee-Anne Mulholland said.
In its announcement on Friday, Google said the ruling by Judge Amit Mehta didn’t account for the pace of innovation and intense competition the company faces.
The company is requesting a pause on implementing a series of fixes, viewed by some observers as too lenient aimed at limiting its monopoly power.
Judge Mehta acknowledged the rapid changes to the Google’s business when he issued his remedies in September, writing that the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI) had changed the course of the case.
He refused to grant government lawyers their request for a Google breakup that would include a spin-off of Chrome, the world’s most popular browser.
Instead, he pushed less rigorous remedies, including a requirement that Google share certain data with “qualified competitors” as deemed by the court.
That data was due to include portions of its search index, Google’s massive inventory of web content that functions like a map of the internet.
The judge also called for Google to allow certain competitors to display the tech giant’s search results as their own in a bid to give upstarts the time and resources they need to innovate.
On Friday, Mulholland balked at being forced to share search data and syndication services with rivals as she justified the request for a halt to implementing the orders.
“These mandates would risk Americans’ privacy and discourage competitors from building their own products, ultimately stifling the innovation that keeps the US at the forefront of global technology,” Mulholland wrote.
While the company has invested growing sums of cash into AI, those ambitions have come under scrutiny.
Last month, the EU opened an investigation into Google over its AI summaries which appear above search results.
The European Commission said it would probe whether Google used data from websites to provide the service and failed to offer appropriate compensation to publishers.
Google said the investigation risked stifling innovation in a competitive market.
This week, Google parent Alphabet became the fourth company ever to reach a market capitalization of $4tn.
Last month, the EU has opened an investigation into Google over its artificial intelligence (AI) summaries which appear above search results.
The European Commission said it would examine whether the firm used data from websites to provide this service and if it failed to offer “appropriate compensation” to publishers.
It is also investigating how YouTube videos may have been used to improve its broader AI systems and whether content creators were able to opt-out.
A Google spokesperson said the probe “risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever”.
“Europeans deserve to benefit from the latest technologies and we will continue to work closely with the news and creative industries as they transition to the AI era,” they said. The EU’s investigation will also cover Google’s AI Mode, which gives people an answer in a conversational style with some links to other pages.
It is in addition to the tech giant’s existing search platform, providing an experience similar to its rivals such as ChatGPT. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
