DEFAULTING TO THE STATUS QUO: THE GOOGLE SEARCH REMEDIES DECISION

By Samuel Miller and Ryan Sandrock¹

The hardest part of a government-initiated Section 2 monopolization case is figuring out the appropriate remedy. In part, this is because the general pronouncements of the Supreme Court regarding remedies in monopolization cases are somewhat in conflict. On the one hand, antitrust relief should unfetter a market from anticompetitive conduct, "pry open a market that had been closed" by defendant’s illegal conduct and deny to the defendant the fruits of its statutory violation.² On the other hand, the remedy should not be designed to punish the defendant, should be "tailored to fit the wrong" and should not undermine the incentives of the defendant or rivals to innovate.³ Finding the right balance is especially difficult in cases, such as Microsoft and Google, where the defendant acquired monopoly power through innovation and "competition on the merits," but was found to have illegally maintained a monopoly by "exclusionary" means. And it is particularly difficult when the markets at issue change over the course of the case—so that a case about Search became a case about AI.

In the landmark decision of United States v. Google LLC, 747 F. Supp. 3d 1 (D.D. C. 2024), District Judge Amit Mehta found that Google had violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by entering into actual or de facto exclusive dealing arrangements for default placement of Google search with browser developers such as Apple and Mozilla, wireless carriers such as Verizon and AT&T, and cellphone manufacturers such as Samsung and Motorola. The "wrong" committed by Google was to "lock up" the key channels of distribution for general search services to the exclusion of rivals such as Bing and DuckDuckGo, giving Google a massive scale advantage.⁴

This article will examine Judge Mehta’s recent Remedy Opinion, issued on Sept. 2, 2025, United States v Google LLC, case 1: 20-cv-03010, Dkt. 1436 (hereinafter Google Remedy Opn.) and discuss whether Judge Mehta found the right balance. Judge Mehta’s Liability and Remedy Opinions were heavily influenced by the decisions in the Microsoft case, including the historic D.C. Circuit en banc decision upholding Section 2 liability (but reversing the District Court’s remedy determination that Microsoft should be broken up), United States v Microsoft Corp., 253 F. 3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001), as well as the subsequent decision approving the consent judgment agreed to by the Antitrust Division and some