Google Antitrust Remedy: Judge Limits Default Search Contracts to One-Year Term
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In response to the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Google, federal judge Amit Mehta has issued a significantly expanded set of remedies, ruling that any future contracts in which Google requires device manufacturers to set its search or AI services as default must be strictly limited to a one-year term.
This ruling means Google will now be compelled to renegotiate agreements annually—arrangements that historically spanned many years, most notably its multibillion-dollar deal with Apple that makes Google Search the default search engine on the iPhone.
Judge Mehta argued that imposing a one-year limit would force Google back to the negotiating table on a regular basis, thereby creating a more equitable competitive landscape for rivals such as Microsoft’s Bing or DuckDuckGo. It also increases opportunities for alternative providers to compete for default placement. This development follows the judge’s September decision that Google would not be required to divest its Chrome browser business—a proposal the U.S. Supreme Court had aggressively floated in late 2024. Instead, the court opted for behavioral remedies rather than structural breakup.
The case stems from last autumn’s ruling, in which the court found that Google had unlawfully maintained its monopoly in online search by paying Apple and other companies billions of dollars to secure default search positions, and by signing exclusive distribution agreements involving Google Search, Chrome, and Gemini.
Beyond shortening contract durations, Judge Mehta’s September decision also struck down these exclusivity arrangements and required Google to share certain search data with competitors. The aim is to narrow the “scale gap” created by Google’s long-standing dominance and to give other search engines access to the data necessary to refine their algorithms and improve service quality.
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