In a nearly 300-page decision handed down last August, Federal Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled that Google monopolized the general search market. A year later, Judge Mehta will soon decide on the appropriate remedies that Google must implement to address the court-determined harms. Startups may get caught in the crossfire.
Since Judge Mehta made his determination, the Department of Justice has proposed some remedial solutions that would do more harm than good: mandating data sharing with competitors in the industry and structural divestitures involving the separation from Google’s Chrome browser. However, not all proposed remedies are overreaching. Prohibiting Google from paying to secure default status for its general search engine is in line with court-determined harms and makes more sense than the other reforms that risk harming the startup ecosystem.
On the whole, some of these remedies may have pro-competitive market effects but concentrate markets in other respects. Consider that these solutions—designed to level the playing field—may pinch startups and smaller companies that rely on the (often free) services provided by larger tech firms to offset their own high infrastructure and operational costs. This access lowers barriers to entry, allowing emerging firms to concentrate resources on innovation and gradually scale to compete more effectively. The potential structural divestitures and sharing of data can greatly affect how this process unfolds.
For example, some startups depend on Google’s platforms for essential functions like mentorship, funding, and search exposure. According to Engine, a nonprofit representing small tech companies, sweeping remedies that break apart products or fundamentally alter Google’s infrastructure could result in higher costs that startups and small companies are not able to absorb. The remedy of forced divesture would not only affect the market for general search engines, but also how startups in the AI sector benefit from these shared infrastructure costs. The unintended consequences of this remedy can cripple AI startups.
Forced data sharing might also have unintended consequences for startups. If startups can acquire “user-side and ads data for a period of ten years, at no cost,” as the DOJ is proposing, the incentive for Google to keep investing in these platforms would be reduced. If companies with the resources to invest in large-scale data collection scale back, startups will be left with lower-quality data, limiting the products they can develop.
In a market where many startups decide to go into their ventures with the intention of being acquired, these remedies risk making acquisitions even less common. That is one way a court remedy could discourage the start-up exit path of acquisition.
Fortunately, there is an indication that Judge Mehta understands the need for nuance. During proceedings, he acknowledged that the search landscape is rapidly evolving, particularly with AI-driven competitors like OpenAI and Perplexity entering the market. This recognition makes it more likely that the judge will discard the harshest remedies and thereby avoid some decisions that harm, not help, innovation.
Given these considerations from Judge Mehta, specific remedies such as prohibiting paid deals from Google to obtain a default status with distribution partners make sense. They target the core antitrust harm without broadly disrupting other markets. Still, even this narrow approach has drawbacks. Independent browsers like Mozilla, which relies on Google search deals for about 90 percent of its revenue, and Opera, which has long benefited from similar arrangements, could face serious challenges if default deals are banned. The harms to these same competitors that the remedies aim to improve should be considered. Despite these risks, the measure remains relatively focused on addressing Google’s dominance in general search engines.
Courts should keep in mind that technology startups rely on collaboration, investments, and mergers with other companies. If the Department of Justice forgets about this, the remedy process could turn the dream of a more competitive search industry into a nightmare.
Pablo Garcia Quint is a technology policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, follow us on X @ConsumerPal.