Google has appealed antitrust search remedies to the D.C. Circuit, contesting data-sharing rules and seeking to exclude AI rivals like OpenAI from search data access.
Google has filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging court-ordered remedies that followed a landmark antitrust ruling against the company [1]. Central to the appeal is Google's challenge to a mandatory data-sharing obligation requiring it to provide search data to competitors [1]. Google also seeks a specific carve-out that would exclude generative AI companies, including OpenAI, from receiving that data [1]. The company separately contends that its multibillion-dollar payments to Apple to secure default search engine placement did not distort user search behavior or competition [1].
The appeal arises from a remedies proceeding before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia [1]. In August 2024, Judge Mehta found that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in the general search market [2]. Following that liability finding, the court conducted remedies proceedings to determine what structural and behavioral relief, if any, to impose [2]. Judge Mehta declined to order two of the most aggressive remedies the Department of Justice sought, including divestiture of the Chrome browser and termination of the Apple default search agreement [1]. The DOJ filed a cross-appeal in February seeking to reinstate those remedies [1].
The D.C. Circuit proceeding will now decide whether the remedies Judge Mehta did impose are sufficient, whether those he declined to impose should be required, and whether Google's proposed AI carve-out has legal merit [1]. The DOJ's cross-appeal puts Chrome divestiture back on the table, a structural remedy that would separate one of the world's most widely used browsers from its parent company [1]. The AI data-sharing dispute adds a further dimension: whether competitors building large language model-powered search products are entitled to access the same corpus of query and click data as traditional search rivals [1]. Google's position, if accepted, would draw a legal boundary between legacy search competitors and AI-native entrants [1].
Briefing schedules before the D.C. Circuit have not been publicly confirmed, and no oral argument date has been set [1]. The outcome will determine the competitive structure of both the search advertising market and the emerging AI search sector, with billions in annual revenue dependent on whether behavioral remedies, structural divestitures, or some combination ultimately survives appellate review [1] [2].