The big search monopoly case against Google is still far from over. According to Law360, federal judge Amit Mehta in Washington said at a hearing on Friday that he is "increasingly concerned" that preparing the remedies he ordered against Google is taking too long.
What was decided
Last year Mehta rejected the US Justice Department's demands to break up Google and force it to sell the Chrome browser and the Android operating system. Instead, he ordered Google to share some search data with "qualified competitors" and provide them search results, under the oversight of a special committee. In May this year Mehta denied Google's request to pause the remedies, ruling that data sharing was still months away.
The appeals
According to Alphabet's quarterly report, the company appealed in October both rulings against it, in search and in ad technology, and the appeals are pending. In the third quarter it booked a $1 billion charge for fines.
Why it matters
The remedies are meant to open the search market to competition, at a time when chatbots such as ChatGPT compete with Google over how people look for information. The longer implementation drags, the greater the chance the market will change on its own before regulation has an effect.
