A US court ruled that Google won't be required to sell its Chrome browser and Android operating system, but will need to share information with competitors. US District Judge Amit Mehta rejected the Department of Justice's request to break up Google through the sale of Chrome and Android. However, the decision bars the tech giant from having exclusive deals, positioning itself as the default search engine on its products, including Android and Chrome, along with third parties like Apple.
Before the ruling, it was revealed that Google paid companies billions of dollars to exclusively pre-load and promote its products. While they can't enter exclusive contracts, Google can still pay other companies to pre-load their products on different devices, noting it would cause "downstream harm" to cut off payments completely. Revenue-sharing deals will be limited to one-year periods.