When Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled in August 2024 that Google had unlawfully monopolised general search and search-text advertising, he settled liability without setting penalties. The remedies would come later.
They arrived after a Spring 2025 remedies trial. In September 2025, the court barred certain exclusive distribution agreements, ordered Google to share specified search data with qualified competitors, and required it to offer search-results and text-ad syndication. The court rejected the US Department of Justice's request to break up Google or force a sale of Chrome.
Google and the DOJ have appealed the search liability and remedies rulings to the D.C. Circuit, leaving the outcome unsettled.
The search case is one of two antitrust actions in which the DOJ has found Google liable over the past two years. The other concerns the technology used to buy and sell online advertising.
In April 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema, also of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, found that Google had unlawfully maintained monopolies in publisher ad-server and ad-exchange markets. She rejected the government's claim concerning the advertiser ad network.
That case reached a remedies trial in November 2025. The DOJ is seeking the sale of Google's AdX exchange, with the sale of its DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) ad server as a possible backstop. Google is arguing for behavioural remedies instead.
As of August 2026, Judge Brinkema had yet to issue a remedies decision.
Google also prevailed against private antitrust claims over AI Overviews. On September 30, 2026, Mehta issued a 41-page memorandum opinion dismissing suits brought by Chegg and Penske Media Corporation.
Chegg, an education technology company, sued in February 2025. Penske Media, the owner of Rolling Stone, Billboard, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, followed in September 2025. Each claimed Google had forced it to provide content for free for AI Overviews.
Mehta found no enforceable agreement between the plaintiffs and Google. The court found no agreement between publishers and Google on the forced use of content in AI Overviews.
He wrote that “an expectation is not an agreement”, and said forced provision of content was “simply how a general search engine works.”
The judge also rejected Penske's tying claim, finding that AI Overviews was not a product separate from Google Search. In March 2026, he had dismissed similar antitrust claims in Helena World Chronicle v. Google.
The dismissal includes a final, appealable order, allowing either publisher to take the case to the D.C. Circuit.
The cases have progressed during upheaval at the Justice Department's Antitrust Division. There has been a mass exodus of lawyers in recent months amid leadership upheaval and allegations of corruption, and Antitrust Chief Gail Slater resigned earlier in 2026.
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