Two Separate Federal Courts Ruled Google an Illegal Monopolist Within Eight Months of Each Other. Google's Punishment So Far Is a Scheduling Requirement, and Its Profit That Year Was $132 Billion.

On August 5, 2024, Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in general search and general search text advertising. Eight months later, on April 17, 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that Google had illegally monopolized the market for advertising technology — holding roughly 90% of the publisher ad server market and illegally tying its products together to keep it that way. Two federal judges, two separate trials, two separate findings that the same company broke the law to dominate two separate markets.

Here is what happened next. In the search case, Google keeps Chrome. It keeps Android. It can keep paying billions of dollars a year to be the default search engine on other companies' devices — it just can't sign exclusive deals anymore, and the contracts can't run longer than a year. In the ad-tech case, the government asked the judge to break up Google's advertising business by spinning off its ad exchange, AdX. As of September 2026, more than a year after the verdict, there is no remedies ruling at all. Meanwhile, Alphabet's net income for fiscal year 2025 was $132.2 billion.

The search verdict

Judge Mehta's August 2024 ruling centered on a simple mechanism: Google paid to be the default. Not just paid — paid enormously, and exclusively, for a position most users would never think to change.

• Google's dominance was built chiefly through multibillion-dollar default-placement deals with Apple and other device makers and browser developers.
• Google paid Apple $20 billion in 2022 alone to remain Safari's default search engine.
• Per unsealed court filings, Google's Apple payments reportedly exceeded $1 billion a month by 2021, and in 2020 amounted to roughly 17.5% of Apple's total operating income.
• The court found these arrangements — not superior product quality alone — were what kept rival search engines from ever gaining meaningful share.

The remedies, a year later

The remedies ruling arrived September 2, 2025 — thirteen months after the liability finding. It stopped well short of the structural breakup the Justice Department had pushed for.

• Google keeps Chrome and keeps Android.
• Google can still pay for default search placement — the exclusivity requirement and the practice of locking in multi-year, take-it-or-leave-it terms are what's banned, not the payments themselves.
• Google must share a limited set of search index and interaction data with competitors — search advertising data is explicitly excluded from the sharing requirement.
• A Technical Committee was created to oversee compliance.
• The remedies were finalized December 5, 2025, and took effect February 3, 2026.
• Google filed a notice of appeal to the D.C. Circuit on January 22, 2026; its principal brief was filed May 22, 2026. The DOJ cross-appealed, arguing the remedies don't go far enough. Oral arguments aren't expected until late 2026 or early 2027.

The ad-tech verdict, and its missing remedy

The Virginia case involved a different market but a similar shape: dominance sustained by controlling both sides of a transaction and forcing customers through the middle.

• Judge Brinkema found Google held approximately 90% of the publisher ad server market, roughly 50% of the ad exchange market, and roughly 50% of the advertiser ad network market.
• The court found Google illegally tied these products together, making it difficult for publishers and advertisers to use competing tools at any stage of the pipeline.
• The remedies trial ran September 22–30, 2025; closing arguments were heard November 21, 2025.
• The DOJ asked for Google to divest AdX, its ad exchange, and to open-source its publisher ad server, Google Ad Manager.
• Judge Brinkema signaled skepticism toward a structural breakup, citing concerns about how a divestiture would hold up on appeal.
• As of September 2026 — more than a year after the guilty verdict — no remedies ruling has been issued.

The numbers running underneath

Both cases unfolded against the backdrop of a business that kept growing through every stage of litigation.

• Alphabet's fiscal year 2025 revenue was $402.8 billion.
• Google Services alone brought in $87.1 billion in the third quarter of 2025.
• Alphabet's Q3 2025 was its first-ever $100 billion revenue quarter.
• FY2025 net income was $132.2 billion, up 32% from $100.1 billion in 2024.
• No monetary fine or damages award has been imposed in either case. The remedies issued so far are behavioral and structural conduct rules — not financial penalties.

What "illegal monopolist" currently means

Two federal courts have now used the phrase to describe the same company for two different businesses. In practical terms, as of September 2026, that finding has produced a ban on exclusive default-placement contracts, a one-year cap on the deals Google can still sign, a limited data-sharing mandate that excludes ad data, and a Technical Committee to check the paperwork — in the search case. In the ad-tech case, it has so far produced nothing enforceable at all; the remedy is still being written more than sixteen months after the trial that established the violation.

Two federal judges, in two federal courts, eight months apart, found that Google built its dominance in part by paying a company — Apple — billions of dollars a year not to compete with it. The consequence of that finding, as of September 2026, is a contract-length rule in one case and an unwritten ruling in the other. Google's profit in the fiscal year those remedies took effect was $132.2 billion.

Filed from public reporting:

• Goodwin — "Google is an Illegal Monopoly, Federal Court Rules"
• CNN — "Google has an illegal monopoly on search, judge rules"
• Bloomberg — "Google's Payments to Apple Reached $20 Billion in 2022"
• Washington Post — "Google holds an illegal monopoly in ad sales, federal court rules"
• Department of Justice — "Department of Justice Prevails in Landmark Antitrust Case Against Google"
• CNBC — "Google stock jumps as judge rules it can keep Chrome"
• NPR — "In a major antitrust ruling, a judge lets Google keep Chrome"
• CNBC — "Judge finalizes remedies in Google antitrust case"
• Digiday — "Everything you need to know about the closing stages of Google's ad tech antitrust trial"
• Alphabet — "Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2025 Results" (SEC filing PDF)