Google dodges the big bullet of having to sell Chrome: it saved itself from the fact that its monopoly may have its days numbered.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday, September 2, that Google can keep its popular Chrome search engine, but prohibited it from signing exclusive contracts that obligate users to use the browser and ordered it to share any data it collects.

It was last August 2024 when Google received its first blow after the US court ruled that Google had abused its dominant position in the web search engine market, thus creating an illegal monopoly.

As a result, the court proposed dismantling Google's business, with one of the key aspects being the sale of Chrome by the American giant. As expected, Google refused and took the case to court seeking a new solution that wouldn't force them to part with their most valuable asset.

Now, as we've just learned, the company is looking for a new lease on life after Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google is not required to "divest Chrome and the Android operating system" because "plaintiffs overstepped their bounds by seeking the compulsory divestiture of these key assets that Google did not use to impose unlawful restrictions."

Additionally, it ruled that Google would not be prohibited from making payments or offering other compensation to distribution partners for installing Google Search, Chrome, or its generative AI products, as doing so would cause "substantial harm" to both its partners and its customers.

However, Mehta has prohibited Google from "maintaining any exclusive contract related to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app."

This new decision is surprising, given that it was this same judge who ruled that Google had violated antitrust laws regarding its dominance in internet search. However, as he now acknowledges , "much has changed" since the end of that lawsuit, and although Google remains "the dominant company," AI technologies, and especially generative AI , "can be a game changer."

"Today, tens of millions of people use GenAI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, to gather information they previously sought through internet searches ," he noted.

After the ruling was announced, shares of Alphabet, Google's parent company, soared 6% in after-hours trading on Wall Street.