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Judge Mehta found Google an illegal monopolist but refused to break it up. Now both sides are before the D.C. Circuit, and the fight has shifted from liability to remedy.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Hon. Amit P. Mehta), on appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit
The government's landmark monopolization case against Google has entered its appellate phase, and the fight has shifted from liability to the far harder problem of remedy. In August 2024, Judge Mehta held that Google unlawfully maintained a monopoly in general search and search-text advertising in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, principally through the exclusive default-placement agreements that made Google the out-of-the-box search engine on browsers and mobile devices. The liability finding was sweeping; the remedy that followed was not.
In September 2025, Judge Mehta declined to order the structural relief the Department of Justice had sought—there would be no forced divestiture of Chrome or Android. Instead, he imposed a set of behavioral remedies: shortened, non-exclusive default agreements, limits on tying, obligations to share portions of Google's search index and user-interaction data with qualified competitors, and syndication licensing designed to lower entry barriers. Notably, the remedies reach forward into generative AI, restraining Google from replicating its exclusive-default playbook in the market for AI assistants and AI-driven search. A final judgment memorializing the decree issued in December 2025.
Both sides were dissatisfied, and both are now before the D.C. Circuit. Google filed its notice of appeal in January 2026, challenging not only the remedy—particularly the data-sharing mandates and the technical-committee oversight mechanism—but the underlying liability determination itself, contending that the court misapplied settled antitrust principles to conduct it characterizes as ordinary competition. The Department of Justice, joined by a coalition of states, has pressed a cross-appeal seeking the stronger structural relief the district court refused.
The appeal squarely presents the recurring modern question of antitrust: when a monopolist is found liable, what relief actually restores competition, and how much deference does a district court's remedial judgment command? Google's position leans on the principle that courts should hesitate before imposing intrusive, administratively complex decrees; the government's position is that behavioral remedies invite years of evasion and boundary-testing. Briefing is expected to run through much of 2026, with argument likely in late 2026 or early 2027, and eventual Supreme Court review is a realistic prospect.
Because the search case runs on a parallel track to the separate ad-tech monopolization action in the Eastern District of Virginia, the D.C. Circuit's treatment of remedy will resonate well beyond this docket. Its resolution will shape how aggressively courts are willing to reorder the architecture of dominant technology platforms, and whether the pattern of "liability without breakup" hardens into the default outcome of federal monopolization litigation.
Track this case with PacerPlus. United States v. Google now turns on a multi-front appeal whose briefing and argument will unfold across 2026 and beyond. Use pacerplus.com to monitor the docket in real time, get plain-English summaries of every new brief and order, and ask questions about the record and the issues — then turn on PACEAlert to be notified the moment a ruling, filing, or scheduling change lands.