Washington, D.C. — September 2, 2025
The U.S. Department of Justice secured a major victory Tuesday in its long-running battle against Google, as a federal court ordered sweeping remedies to curb the tech giant’s dominance in search and search advertising.
In United States et al. v. Google, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia barred Google from entering or maintaining exclusive contracts tied to the distribution of its core products — Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and its new Gemini app. The court also ordered the company to share portions of its search index and user-interaction data with rivals, and to make its search and text ad syndication services available to competitors.
The remedies aim to loosen Google’s more than decade-long grip on the general search market, where it has held roughly 90 percent of U.S. queries. The ruling also addresses concerns that Google could replicate its anticompetitive tactics in emerging generative AI (GenAI) technologies.
“This decision marks an important step forward in the Department of Justice’s ongoing fight to protect American consumers,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we will continue our legal efforts to hold companies accountable for monopolistic practices.”
Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater, who leads the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, called the ruling “a remedy to restore competition for millions of Americans subjected to Google’s monopoly abuses.”
The DOJ first filed its monopolization case against Google in October 2020 during Trump’s first term, joined initially by 11 states. Over time, nearly every state and territory signed on, making the case one of the broadest bipartisan antitrust efforts in decades.
After a nine-week trial in 2023, Judge Amit Mehta ruled last year that Google had unlawfully maintained its monopoly in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The remedies announced Tuesday follow a 15-day remedies trial held earlier this year.
Under the court’s order, Google is prohibited from:
- Conditioning app licenses on the preloading or placement of Google’s search products,
- Tying revenue-sharing payments to the placement of multiple Google apps,
- Requiring partners to keep Google products as defaults for more than one year, or
- Blocking partners from distributing competing search engines, browsers, or GenAI tools.
The decision represents the most significant antitrust ruling against a tech platform since the government’s case against Microsoft two decades ago.
Whether the remedies will meaningfully erode Google’s dominance — or open the door for rivals in search and GenAI — remains to be seen.
Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-wins-significant-remedies-against-google
