• by Wendy Davis , 2 hours ago

Google is appealing a district court judge's finding that it monopolized search, and has asked him to stay orders requiring it to share some data about users' searches with "qualified" competitors and to provide syndicated search results and ads to those competitors.

In a motion filed Friday with U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C, Google argues that those orders would cause "irreparable harm" by allowing competitors to "gain access to vast amounts of Google’s proprietary information."

The company adds that the mandate "would jeopardize user privacy for hundreds of millions of Americans."

"The public interest dictates that appellate review should occur before the private search queries of Google users are shared without their consent and before innovation and investment are permanently warped by compelled data disclosures and syndication," Google writes.

The motion comes in an antitrust battle dating to 2020, when the federal Department of Justice and a coalition of states accused Google of violating anti-monopoly laws in several ways, including by obtaining dominance in search by contracting to be the default search engine in Mozilla's Firefox browser and Apple's Safari browser, and to have its search engine preinstalled on Android smartphones.

Mehta ruled against Google in August 2024, writing in a 286-page decision that the company maintained a monopoly in two markets: general search services, and search text ads.

He said in the ruling that Google "exercised its monopoly power by charging supracompetitive prices for general search text ads."

In September 2025, Mehta issued an order aimed at remedying the monopoly. That order includes the data sharing mandate that Google is now seeking to stay. The order also prohibits Google from entering into exclusive distribution contracts for Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant and the Gemini app for six years.

Google argues in its new motion that it's likely to convince appellate judges that it did not violate antitrust law, writing that it "will demonstrate that its agreements to be the default search engine in third-party web browsers are the product of competition on the merits and are not exclusionary as a matter of law."

The company also says the remedies imposed by Mehta are "contrary to law," and that the requirements regarding data sharing and syndication should not be in effect while its appeal is pending.

"The data disclosure and compelled syndication remedies would be extraordinary under any circumstance, and they are legally impermissible in this case," Google writes.

The company makes several arguments for a stay, including that the compelled disclosures could hurt search advertisers.

"Google’s advertiser customers would face significant harm ... due to Google’s diminished ability to detect fraudulent schemes perpetrated on syndication and sub-syndication sites if Google is compelled to license ads to any Qualified Competitor," Google writes.

The company adds that if it's forced to share information about users' searches, it would no longer be able to promise users that it doesn't share their data with others.

What's more, Google argues, if that data were disclosed to "qualified competitors," it "would be a target for malicious actors seeking to access Google’s trade secrets and users’ personal data from companies with less robust security systems or fewer incentives to protect this valuable information."

Mehta hasn't yet indicated when he will rule on Google's request.