Google Won’t Have to Sell Chrome Browser After All (But There’s a Catch)

A federal judge ruled in a high-profile antitrust case against Google on Tuesday with some good news and bad news for the tech giant. The good news for Google is that it won’t have to sell off its Chrome browser, which was a very real possibility. Google’s stock soared in after hours trading on the news.

The bad news for Google was that it will be required to share data with its rivals and can’t sign many of the exclusive contracts that helped the company become so dominant in the industry.

The ruling, which is available on Court Listener, comes from Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who first ruled in Aug. 2024 that Google’s search business was an illegal monopoly.

“Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment,” the ruling states. “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”

The Chrome browser has about 3.5 billion users, which is pretty impressive when you remember that there are only about 8.1 billion people on the entire planet. And AI company Perplexity even made an unsolicited offer to by Chrome last month, though it was considered to be a stunt by many tech industry watchers. Perplexity was offering $34.5 billion but was only valued at the time at about $18 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Tuesday’s ruling explained that Google will need to share “search index and user-interaction data, though not ads data,” with “qualified competitors.” The ruling also says the company “will be barred from entering or maintaining any exclusive contract relating to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app,” though there are a lot of carve outs that will allow Google to enter contracts in order to not harm downstream businesses.

Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening. Gizmodo will update this article if we hear back.

This is a developing story and will be updated.