In a critical but easily missed part of his ruling, the judge in the Google antitrust case has left the door wide open for future, harsher penalties if the current remedies fail. By stating he is “prepared to revisit” a ban on Google’s payments to Apple, Judge Amit Mehta has put the entire search industry on notice.
This crucial caveat transforms the verdict from a final judgment into a conditional one. The survival of Google’s multi-billion dollar deals now depends on whether the softer remedies—like data sharing and enhanced user choice—actually succeed in fostering “substantial” new competition.
This creates a high-stakes probationary period. Over the next few years, the market share of Google’s competitors will be intensely scrutinized. If companies like DuckDuckGo or Microsoft Bing fail to make significant gains, the court could be persuaded to take the more drastic step of cutting off the payments it just chose to preserve.
This element of the ruling gives the DOJ a powerful tool for the future. If the market remains stagnant, they can return to court with concrete evidence that the judge’s initial remedy was insufficient, making a compelling case for the “lesser remedy” or outright payment ban that the judge has already pre-authorized himself to consider.
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