Can we get from a world where Google is synonymous with search to a world  where other search engines have a real chance to compete? The U.S. and state governments’ bipartisan antitrust suit, challenging the many ways that Google has maintained its search monopoly, offers an opportunity.

Antitrust enforcers have proposed a set of complementary remedies, from giving users a choice of search engine, to forcing Google to spin off Chrome and possibly Android into separate companies. Overall, this is the right approach. Google’s dominance in search is too entrenched to yield to a single fix. But there are real risks to users in the mix as well: Forced sharing of people’s sensitive search queries with competitors could seriously undermine user privacy, as could a breakup without adequate safeguards.

Let’s break it down.

The Antitrust Challenge to Google Search

The Google Search antitrust suit began in 2020 under the first Trump administration, brought by the Department of Justice and 11 states. (Another 38 states filed a companion suit.) The heart of the suit was Google’s agreements with mobile phone makers, browser makers, and wireless carriers, requiring that Google Search be the default search engine, in return for revenue share payments including up to $20 billion per year that Google paid to Apple. A separate case, filed in 2023, challenged Google’s dominance in online advertising. Following a bench trial in summer 2023, Judge Amit Mehta of the D.C. federal court found Google’s search placement agreements to be illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act, because they foreclosed competition in the markets for “general search” and “general search text advertising.”

The antitrust enforcers proposed a set of remedies in fall 2024, and filed a revised version this month, signalling that the new administration remains committed to the case. A hearing on remedies is scheduled for April.

The Obvious Fix: Ban Search Engine Exclusivity and Other Anticompetitive Agreements

The first part of the government’s remedy proposal bans Google from making the kinds of agreements that led to this lawsuit: agreements to make Google the default search engine on a variety of platforms, agreements to pre-install Google Search products on a platform, and other agreements that would give platforms an incentive not to develop a general search engine of their own. This would mean the end of Google’s pay-for-placement agreements with Apple, Samsung, other hardware makers, and browser vendors like Mozilla.

In practice, a ban on search engine default agreements means presenting users with a screen that prompts them to choose a default search engine from among various competitors. Choice screens aren’t a perfect solution, because people tend to stick with what they know. Still, research shows that choice screens can have a positive impact on competition if they are implemented thoughtfully. The court, and the technical committee appointed to oversee Google’s compliance, should apply the lessons of this research.

It makes sense that the first step of a remedy for illegal conduct should be stopping that illegal conduct. But that’s not enough on its own. Many users choose Google Search, and will continue to choose it, because it works well enough and is familiar. Also, as the evidence in this case demonstrated, the walls that Google has built around its search monopoly have kept potential rivals from gaining enough scale to deliver the best results for uncommon search queries. So we’ll need more tools to fix the competition problem.

Safe Sharing: Syndication and Search Index

The enforcers’ proposal also includes some measures that are meant to enable competitors to overcome the scale advantages that Google illegally obtained. One is requiring Google to let competitors use “syndicated” Google search results for 10 years, with no conditions or use restrictions other than “that Google may take reasonable steps to protect its brand, its reputation, and security.” Google would also have to share the results of “synthetic queries”—search terms generated by competitors to test Google’s results—and the “ranking signals” that underlie those queries. Many search engines, including DuckDuckGo, use syndicated search results from Microsoft’s Bing, and a few, like Startpage, receive syndicated results from Google. But Google currently limits re-ranking and mixing of those results—techniques that could allow competitors to offer real alternatives. Syndication is a powerful mechanism for allowing rivals the benefits of scale and size, giving them a chance to achieve a similar scale.

Importantly, syndication doesn’t reveal Google users’ queries or other personal information, so it is a privacy-conscious tool.

Similarly, the proposal orders Google to make its index – the snapshot of the web that forms the basis for its search results - available to competitors. This too is reasonably privacy-conscious, because it presumably includes only data from web pages that were already visible to the public.

Scary Sharing: Users’ “Click and Query” Data

Another data-sharing proposal is more complicated from a privacy perspective: requiring Google to provide qualified competitors with “user-side data,” including users’ search queries and data sets used to train Google's ranking algorithms. Those queries and data sets can include intensely personal details, including medical issues, political opinions and activities, and personal conflicts. Google is supposed to apply “security and privacy safeguards,” but it's not clear how this will be accomplished. An order that requires Google to share even part of this data with competitors raises the risk of data breaches, improper law enforcement access, commercial data mining and aggregation, and other serious privacy harms.

Some in the search industry, including privacy-conscious companies like DuckDuckGo, argue that filtering this “click and query” data to remove personally identifying information can adequately protect users’ privacy while still helping Google’s competitors generate more useful search results. For example, Google could share only queries that were used by some number of unique users. This is the approach Google already takes to sharing user data under the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, though Google sets a high threshold that eliminates about 97% of the data. Other rules that could apply are excluding strings of numbers that could be Social Security or other identification numbers, and other patterns of data that may be sensitive information.

But click and query data sharing still sets up a direct conflict between competition and privacy. Google, naturally, wants to share as little data as possible, while competitors will want more. It’s not clear to us that there’s an optimal point that both protects users’ privacy well and also meaningfully promotes competition. More research might reveal a better answer, but until then, this is a dangerous path, where pursuing the benefits of competition for users might become a race to the bottom for users’ privacy.

The Sledgehammer: Splitting off Chrome and Maybe Android

The most dramatic part of the enforcers’ proposal calls for an order to split off the Chrome browser as a separate company, and potentially also the Android operating system. This could be a powerful way to open up search competition. An independent Chrome and Android could provide many opportunities for users to choose alternative search engines, and potentially to integrate with AI-based information location tools and other new search competitors. A breakup would complement the ban on agreements for search engine exclusivity by applying the same ban to Chrome and Android as to iOS and other platforms.

The complication here is that a newly independent Chrome or Android might have an incentive to exploit users’ privacy in other ways. Given a period of exclusivity in which Google could not offer a competing browser or mobile operating system, Chrome and Android could adopt a business model of monetizing users’ personal data to an even greater extent than Google. To prevent this, a divestiture (breakup) order would also have to include privacy safeguards, to keep the millions of Chrome and Android users from facing an even worse privacy landscape than they do now.

The DOJ and states are pursuing a strong, comprehensive remedy for Google’s monopoly abuses in search, and we hope they will see that effort through to a remedies hearing and the inevitable appeals. We’re also happy to see that the antitrust enforcers are seeking to preserve users’ privacy. To achieve that goal, and keep internet users’ consumer welfare squarely in sight, they should proceed with caution on any user data sharing, and on breakups.