In a landmark decision in a landmark antitrust case, a federal judge in DC has ruled that in order to make restitution for its longstanding monopoly over internet search, Google will have to share some of its data and its search results to several qualified competitors.

As the New York Times reports, Judge Amit P. Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia finally issued a decision on remedy in the antitrust case which has been one of several to have roiled Silicon Valley in recent years. And Judge Mehta stopped short of forcing Google/Alphabet to break itself up or sell off its Chrome web browser or Android operating system — both things that the Justice Department, while still under President Biden, pushed for in a court filing last fall.

Mehta issued his ruling in the case just over a year ago, finding that "Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly." But the question of what remedy would be demanded of Google remained.

The case has drawn many comparisons to the first major antitrust case of the personal computing age, United States v. Microsoft, in which a federal court originally ordered that Microsoft be broken up in 2000, due to its monopolistic dominance over computer operating systems, which at the time also extended to search engines. An appeals court later overturned the decision in part, and Microsoft was able to get away with a lesser remedy in the end, allowing the company just to share of its technology with competitors.

Judge Mehta appears to have heeded the way that case shook out, deciding on a somewhat more lenient remedy. Though as the Times notes, Google is still expected to appeal, and much like the Microsoft case, this will likely be tied up in courts for years to come.

"Notwithstanding [Google's] power, courts must approach the task of crafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility," Mehta said in Tuesday’s decision. "This court has done so."

Bill Baer, an assistant attorney general for antitrust under Obama, tells the Times that this is "the most important antitrust case of the 21st century."

But given the speed at which technology moves, compared to the slowness with which such cases move, the Google monopoly over search could appear moot in several years when it is finally resolved — just like Apple's rise in popularity in the late 90s and early aughts, and the rise of companies like Google and Facebook, helped to make the Microsoft case seem less urgent over time. AI chatbots are already replacing Google searches for many people, and no doubt Apple will at some point release a version of Siri that functions in a similarly powerful way — we already know that they working on this as part of a push for new products in their hardware pipeline.

Google separately faced an antitrust case over its dominance in the world of online adverstising. A different federal judge at a court in Virginia, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema, ruled against the company in that case in April. A decision on remedy in that case is still forthcoming.

Previously: Google Has Illegal Monopoly Over Web Searching, Federal Judge Rules

Photo by Greg Bulla