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Alphabet's Google announced on Saturday that it plans to appeal a recent antitrust ruling, pushing back against a federal judge's proposed measures to restore competition in online search. These proposals are seen as less severe than the 10-year regulatory plan put forward by U.S. antitrust authorities.
“We will wait for the Court's opinion. We continue to believe the original ruling was incorrect and look forward to appealing it,” Google stated in a post on X.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington recently heard closing arguments regarding remedies for Google's unlawful monopoly in online search and advertising.
Back in April, a federal judge determined that Google had unlawfully dominated two online advertising markets. The Department of Justice has since argued that Google should be required to divest parts of its ad business, specifically Google Ad Manager, which includes the company's publisher ad server and ad exchange.
The DOJ, along with several U.S. states, also wants Google to stop paying Apple and other smartphone manufacturers billions to remain the default search engine on new devices. They also demand that Google share certain search data to help restore competitive balance.
Antitrust officials have raised concerns that Google's dominance in search provides it an edge in developing artificial intelligence tools like Gemini—and that this advantage could reinforce its market power.
Google's attorney, John Schmidtlein, argued that the company has already addressed some of these concerns by ending exclusive deals with smartphone makers and wireless carriers, including Samsung. This allows manufacturers to pre-install rival search engines and AI applications on their devices.
