Google has formally appealed a landmark antitrust decision by a US district court that concluded the tech giant unlawfully maintained a monopoly in the online search market.
“We have consistently said that the court’s August 2024 ruling failed to reflect reality — people choose Google because they find it useful, not because they are compelled to,” said Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president for regulatory affairs.
In a statement released on Friday, the company argued that US District Judge Amit Mehta’s decision underestimated both the speed of technological change and the intense competitive pressures facing the company.
Alongside its appeal, Google is seeking to delay the implementation of a set of court-ordered remedies — measures that some critics have already described as overly mild — designed to curb its market dominance. When Judge Mehta issued those remedies in September, he acknowledged that Google’s business environment had evolved rapidly, noting that the rise of generative artificial intelligence had altered the trajectory of the case.
The judge rejected calls from government prosecutors to break up the company, including a proposal that would have forced Google to spin off its Chrome browser, the most widely used browser in the world.
Instead, Mehta opted for more limited corrective measures. These included an order requiring Google to share specific datasets with “qualified competitors”, as determined by the court.
Among the data covered by the ruling were elements of Google’s search index — the vast catalogue of web pages that underpins its search engine and effectively serves as a navigational map of the internet.
The judge also directed Google to allow certain rival companies to display Google’s search results under their own branding, a move intended to give smaller competitors the time and capacity to develop their own innovations.
Mulholland criticised those requirements on Friday, particularly the obligation to share search data and syndication tools with rivals, as she defended Google’s request to pause the enforcement of the court’s orders.
“These mandates threaten Americans’ privacy and reduce incentives for competitors to create their own products,” Mulholland wrote. “Ultimately, they risk suppressing the innovation that has kept the United States at the forefront of global technology.”
Google’s expanding investments in artificial intelligence have also drawn heightened regulatory attention.
Last month, the European Union launched an investigation into Google’s AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of some search results.
The European Commission said it would examine whether Google used content from publishers’ websites to generate those summaries without offering fair compensation.
Google responded by warning that the probe could hinder innovation in what it described as a highly competitive market.
The legal challenge comes as Google’s parent company, Alphabet, reached a historic milestone this week, becoming only the fourth firm ever to surpass a market capitalisation of $4 trillion.
