A court found Google's search default deals illegal

The revenue mechanism

On 5 August 2024, Judge Amit Mehta of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Google had violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act. A joint status report the parties filed with the court a month later quotes the ruling directly: Google 'violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by maintaining its monopoly in two product markets in the United States, general search services and general search text advertising, through its exclusive distribution agreements'. The mechanism at issue is the default-search deal: Google pays browser makers such as Apple and Mozilla, and device makers and carriers selling Android phones, for the right to be the search engine a device or browser uses unless a person actively changes it. Because most people never change a default, the court found, those payments function as a gate channelling queries, and the advertising revenue attached to them, toward Google rather than a rival.

What the documents show

The same filing quotes the court's own findings at length: it states that 'Google has no true competitor' and that its 'monopoly in general search has been remarkably durable', adding that 'Google's dominance has gone unchallenged for well over a decade'. It also quotes a finding that Google 'exercised its monopoly power by charging supracompetitive prices for general search text ads' and that 'there is no evidence that any rival constrains Google's pricing decisions'. These are the court's conclusions after what the filing describes as a bifurcated trial, meaning liability and remedy were decided separately: liability first, in the August 2024 opinion, with a remedy phase to follow. The filing sets out the schedule plaintiffs proposed for that phase, including a remedy framework due in October 2024 and a hearing envisioned for April 2025.

The assumptions exposed

The August 2024 finding is a liability ruling; it does not itself state what Google must do differently. A reader who treats it as having already restructured Google's default-search arrangements would be over-reading a document that explicitly separates liability from remedy. The quotations above are drawn from a party filing that cites the opinion with page numbers, rather than the opinion's full text directly, though they are attributed and pin-cited rather than paraphrased. DOJ's own case page, current as retrieved on 16 September 2026, shows what the remedy phase produced: a Final Judgment and a further Memorandum Opinion, both dated 5 December 2025, more than a year after the liability finding.

What to check before you rely on it

A publisher assessing how much search-referral traffic remains a stable foundation for its plans should track this case's procedural stage rather than a single headline. This is an editorial checklist, not legal advice.

• Am I citing the August 2024 liability finding, the December 2025 remedies judgment, or conflating the two?
• Has the December 2025 judgment taken effect, given that appellate briefing was still being filed in 2026?
• Does the default-agreement conduct the court addressed still describe how search traffic reaches my site today?

The case remains, on the government's own record, an active matter moving through appeal, not a closed question.