Research & Commentary

On September 2, US District Court Judge Amit Mehta issued an opinion that many in the tech industry had been waiting on for more than 15 years: a ruling about how to rectify Google’s maintenance of its illegal monopoly in online search. The most consequential aspect of the opinion is that the remedies will not meaningfully address the conduct at the center of the case: Google paying distributors like Apple, Samsung, and Mozilla tens of billions of dollars per year to lock in Google Search as the default on nearly every mobile phone and across much of the desktop browser market.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority has provisionally designated Google as having Strategic Market Status – a  step toward curbing the company’s dominance in online search. The Knight-Georgetown Institute finds evidence to support this designation and urges the UK to prioritize stronger interventions that address key barriers to entry in the search market.

Robust and comprehensive remedies in the US government’s Google search antitrust case would help prevent Google from leveraging its monopoly power in search to dominate the emerging market for generative AI products.

A new report by the Knight-Georgetown Institute shows how the US government’s proposed Google Chrome divestiture is technically feasible. The in-depth engineering assessment shows how an independent Chrome browser can thrive outside of Google and compete with Chrome’s major rivals.

Google’s dominance in search has made it the subject of antitrust investigations and competition regulation around the world. The latest of these was the announcement in January 2025 that the United Kingdom was launching an investigation under its new digital markets competition regime. In public comments recently filed with UK competition authority, KGI has underscored the importance of being familiar with previous enforcement efforts around the world and prioritizing certain key aspects of competition.