Google Search is an illegal monopoly — what happens now?

A federal judge has ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in the US. “The market reality is that Google is the only real choice” as the default search engine, Judge Amit Mehta said in his decision, and he determined it had gotten that way unfairly. It’s a ruling that could portend big changes for the company, but we yet don’t know how big, and we might not for years.

Mehta declared on Monday that Google was liable for violating antitrust laws, vindicating the Department of Justice and a coalition of states that sued the tech giant in 2020. The next step — deciding on remedies for its illegal conduct — begins next month. Both parties must submit a proposed schedule for remedy proceedings by September 4th and then appear at a status conference on September 6th.

Google and the plaintiffs will spar over how severe its penalty should be, presenting experts and written testimony before Mehta issues another opinion and order. The exact timeline is unclear, though. William Kovacic, a former Federal Trade Commission chair and a professor at George Washington University, tells The Verge that he expects Judge Amit Mehta to hold a roughly weeklong hearing on remedies this year and believes the overall process could stretch to the end of 2024.

Rebecca Haw Allensworth, an antitrust professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, expects a fight that could take up to a year. “There’s going to be gnashing of teeth over the remedy, and that is going to make it take a long time,” Allensworth says.

There’s a wide range of potential remedies. The most dramatic would be breaking up Google to reduce its hold on search and online advertising, but it’s also perhaps the most unlikely, says Allensworth. Monday’s ruling was “a really dramatic win for the Biden administration, and it’s a really dramatic loss for Google, but it is not out-there,” Allensworth says. She thinks Mehta’s restraint is one of the “real strengths” of the opinion but that it indicates “I don’t think we would expect the remedy to then be really out-there.”

A milder remedy, which Kovacic finds most likely, is an injunction that “directs Google to cease the conduct that the court found to be improper.” But even that includes changes that could range from trivial to seismic. Mehta could demand Google modify its multibillion-dollar deals with companies like Apple and Mozilla, for instance, which cement it as the default search engine on products like the iPhone.

Allensworth notes another potential remedy would be requiring Google to share data or even some search algorithm information with other companies. “I think that that has the benefits of directly addressing some of the stuff that the judge is concerned about in his opinion,” she says. But Allensworth notes that “courts don’t like, for a variety of reasons, to force sharing between rivals.”

Whatever remedies the court ends up requiring, Google might not make them for a long time. Google has already said it will appeal the ruling. Appellate courts typically evaluate the liability and remedy rulings in the same proceeding, but Google could appeal a loss there to the Supreme Court, and it could seek an injunction to avoid any changes until the case is settled. (Apple got a yearslong reprieve from modifying its App Store rules in an antitrust battle with Epic.)

Kovacic tells The Verge that we could see a Supreme Court decision by the end of 2026. Other schedules are less optimistic; George Hay, a Cornell University law professor, gave The Associated Press a timeline of up to five years.

If one of these higher courts rules in favor of Google, the final outcome could depend on how the next president’s Justice Department responds. Microsoft, for instance, narrowly avoided being split up in the early 2000s — the incoming George W. Bush administration settled its predecessors’ case instead of pushing through an appeals court defeat. But in 2024, Republican nominee Donald Trump has a longtime grudge against Google and mused recently that it could be “shut down,” while VP and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ antitrust record is relatively sparse — but the Biden administration where she’s served has taken an aggressive stance on tech monopolies. Either one could decide to see the case through.

Whatever the outcome, this isn’t the only antitrust case, or even the only antitrust case against Google, on the horizon. Major litigation is pending against Apple, Amazon, and Meta. Google itself will face another trial in September — this time over its ad tech.