The New York Times no paywall – “In a landmark antitrust case, Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled on Tuesday that Google must hand over some of its search data to rivals but did not grant the government’s biggest requests. Google must hand over its search results and some data to rival companies but will not need to break itself up, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday, a decision in a landmark antitrust case that falls short of the sweeping changes proposed by the government to rein in the power of Silicon Valley. Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said in a ruling that to resolve Google’s monopoly in search, the company must share some of its search data with companies that are “qualified competitors.” The Justice Department had asked the judge to force the company to share even more of its data, arguing it was key to Google’s dominance. Judge Mehta also put restrictions on payments that Google uses to ensure its search engine gets prime placement on smartphones in web browsers. But he stopped short of banning those payments entirely and did not grant the government’s request that Google be forced to sell its popular Chrome web browser, which the government said was necessary to remedy Google’s power as a monopoly. “Notwithstanding this power, courts must approach the task of crafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility,” said Judge Mehta in Tuesday’s decision. “This court has done so.”

See also The New York Times no paywall: “Under Judge Mehta’s ruling, Google is required to hand over some search results to rival companies. Sharing its data, which has been the backbone of its search engine, could help Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity and others improve their search products. Throughout the trial, such data was described as “the oxygen” for search engines. Google has harvested vast amounts of data over the years from searches — nine times all its rivals combined — and analyzed it to make sure that the company provides users with better answers than anyone else. It was a key to Google’s dominance. Judge Mehta said sharing a narrow amount of search data would help competitors improve their search systems. The data will help rivals identify and crawl more websites, so that they can provide better results to search queries. But Google avoided having to share some of its most important data. Judge Mehta declined the government’s request that Google be required to share all of its search index, a database that helps users quickly reach information they are seeking. He also denied a request that Google share a database containing information about people, places and things that can be used to help accurately fulfill search queries…”