What does the Google anti-monopoly ruling mean for the company and you?

A federal judge required Google to share some search data with rival firms but allowed the company to avoid parting ways with its lucrative Chrome browser, according to a ruling issued this week.

The decision, issued by Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, spares Google a corporate breakup sought by its most vociferous critics. The decision also leaves out some remedies requested by the Department of Justice.

However, the ruling called on Google to take several actions. In addition to data-sharing, Mehta said Google must abandon multi-billion-dollar exclusivity agreements that made it a default search engine for browsers like Apple’s Safari, which yielded significant traffic for Google.

The decision came a year after Mehta found Google had maintained an illegal monopoly power in online searching.

“Notwithstanding this power, courts must approach the task of crafting remedies with a healthy dose of humility,” Mehta wrote in Tuesday's ruling. “This court has done so.”

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the ruling.

“This decision marks an important step forward in the Department of Justice’s ongoing fight to protect American consumers. Under President Trump’s leadership, we will continue our legal efforts to hold companies accountable for monopolistic practices,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement posted on the DOJ website.

The ruling holds little import for Google or its users in the near future, since the company retains a dominant position in the search engine market and its accommodation of the order will not require major operational changes, antitrust experts told ABC News.

But, they added, the ruling could boost rival companies and hold significant implications for an industry being upended by artificial intelligence, though the ultimate outcome remains unclear.

Here’s what to know about how the antitrust ruling could impact Google and its users:

What does the antitrust ruling mean for Google?

The ruling requires Google to take concrete steps to level the playing field in the search engine market long-dominated by the Mountain View, Calif.-based tech giant, experts told ABC News.

First, the company will need to share some key search data with its competitors, allowing them to benefit from the advantage enjoyed by Google as it established a large user base, absorbed massive troves of customer information and optimized its search results, the ruling said.

The company must pass along a portion of its search index, a collection of website data that helps fuel the results viewed by users, according to the decision.

Google currently controls about 90% of the search engine market, but the forced handover of some search data could loosen the company’s grip over the industry, Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor of antitrust law at the University of Pennsylvania, told ABC News.

“To the extent that these rivals can produce better search results because they have access to Google’s database, that may steal market share from Google,” Hovenkamp said.

Next, the decision calls on Google to do away with contracts that afforded the company exclusive positioning as a default search engine for browsers or products made by other firms, such as iPhones. The company spent billions of dollars each year to secure such agreements, the ruling said, allowing Google to land in front of users.

After the ruling, Google will be permitted to attain default status in certain circumstances but the company must forego exclusivity agreements that helped seal its dominance, experts said.

“The question is: Will Google be more vulnerable to technological shakeups when they can’t pay for exclusivity?” Rebecca Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School who focuses on antitrust issues, told ABC News. “The fact that they were willing to pay billions a year means they will be more vulnerable. We just can't predict how those technological changes will play out.”

In a statement, Google said the ruling acknowledges growing competition in online searching amid the adoption of AI.

“This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want,” said Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs.

Still, Mulholland said the company has “concerns about how these requirements will impact our users and their privacy, and we’re reviewing the decision closely.”

The company disagrees strongly with the court's finding last year that Google is liable for having illegally maintained a monopoly, Mulholland added.

What does the antitrust ruling mean for Google users?

In the short-term, Google users will not notice a change as a result of the decision, experts said.

The lagging impact owes in part to a likely delay in the onset of remedies as Google files an expected appeal, they said, meaning as many as several years could pass before the changes must be implemented.

Experts said they cannot predict the precise impact of the ruling because it will depend on the extent to which the competitive landscape changes and the products that rise to the fore as a result.

“It’s a butterfly effect,” Allensworth said. “Competition shapes all of the products consumers interact with and that process takes time.”

In one scenario, current competitors or new entrants may significantly improve their search results due to the shared data from Google, Allensworth added. Consumers, in turn, could enjoy a wider array of options with high-quality search results.

"It’s very, very difficult and expensive to build a map of the internet, and Google is so far ahead of its competitors. This forced sharing could help that problem," Allensworth said.

Hypothetically, a browser could include a window with multiple search engine options, allowing users to select which one they would prefer to use at a given time, Hovenkamp said. Those options could offer different types of AI tools, including some products that summarize available web pages while others display relevant search results.

“There are a lot of options and this decision could open them up,” Hovenkamp said. “But it will be a while before you start to see these changes.”