Google Files 111-Page DC Circuit Brief Challenging Search Monopoly Conviction and Remedies Order
Google's appellate brief, filed May 22, contests both the 2024 monopoly finding and a remedies order requiring data-sharing with rivals including OpenAI.
Overview
Google filed a 111-page appellate brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on May 22, 2026, asking the court to throw out both the landmark 2024 finding that it illegally maintained a search monopoly and the subsequent remedies order requiring it to share core search assets with rivals. The filing, assigned Case No. 26-5023 and consolidated with two related cases, escalates a legal battle that could reshape how Google distributes its search engine across browsers and mobile devices — and whether AI companies like OpenAI gain access to Google’s proprietary index, data, and ranking models.
What Google Is Arguing
The brief opens with a line from Judge Learned Hand — “The successful competitor, having been urged to compete, must not be turned upon when he wins” — and builds its core argument around the proposition that U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta committed “as basic an error of antitrust law as a court can make” by conflating harm to competitors with harm to competition itself, as reported by WinBuzzer.
Google contends that its dominance predates the conduct the trial court found unlawful: according to the brief, the company controlled roughly 80% of U.S. search queries as early as 2009, before the exclusive default agreements with Apple and Mozilla were at their most remunerative, according to PPC.land. The company’s brief further argues that “slightly more than half of all U.S. queries to general search engines flow through channels where no party claims Google did anything wrong,” with 28% flowing through Safari and Firefox and 19% through Android, as reported by PPC.land.
On the Apple arrangement — the centerpiece of the trial court’s 2024 liability finding — Google argues that Apple selected its engine as the highest-quality option, not through exclusionary lock-in. “Google just prevailed in the marketplace fair and square,” the company states in its brief, according to WinBuzzer. According to MacRumors, the brief also states that Google “did not impede its rivals’ opportunity” and that there is no evidence “Google’s customers would have chosen a rival.”
In language from the brief quoted by RSWebSols, Google argues the company “cultivated a superior search engine through diligent effort, audacious innovation, and strategic business maneuvers” and that “these arrangements did not obstruct rivals’ opportunities, nor did they restrict Apple and Mozilla’s ability to make better offers.” The brief characterizes the case as “a quintessential case of a thriving competitor being unjustly targeted for its success,” according to RSWebSols.
The Remedies Being Contested
Judge Mehta’s September 2, 2025 remedies order — which took effect in substantial part on February 3, 2026 — imposes several obligations on Google over a six-year period, as detailed by PPC.land:
- A one-time disclosure of Google’s search index to “Qualified Competitors” — a database Google’s brief describes as requiring “billions of dollars” to build
- A rolling transfer of user-side interaction data, including clicks, hover time, and click-back speed
- A five-year requirement to syndicate search results and text advertisements to rivals
- Disclosure of Google’s RankEmbed AI model and associated training data
Apple receives approximately $18 billion annually — an estimated $20 billion in 2022 — for placing Google as the default search engine on Safari, iPhones, iPads, and Macs, according to PPC.land. Mozilla receives hundreds of millions annually for the same arrangement in Firefox. Google’s payments for default placement across all channels total approximately $26 billion per year, according to PPC.land.
Google objects particularly to the remedies extending to generative AI companies. The brief argues that applying the order to AI rivals such as OpenAI amounts to “pure prospective regulatory policymaking in a new and vibrant market, untethered to any liability determination” because these products “did not even exist at the time of Google’s challenged conduct,” according to PPC.land.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s Vice President of regulatory affairs, is among the named officials associated with the company’s response to the case, as noted by WinBuzzer.
The Government’s Parallel Cross-Appeal
The Department of Justice and state attorneys general are not passive respondents. After Mehta declined to impose structural remedies, the DOJ and 35 states formally noticed a cross-appeal in February 2026 seeking stronger relief — specifically the forced divestiture of Chrome that the trial court rejected — according to WinBuzzer. The DOJ plans to submit its appellate arguments in July, according to American Bazaar Online.
The D.C. Circuit is thus presented with two simultaneous appeals pulling in opposite directions: Google argues the trial court went too far, while the government argues it did not go far enough.
What We Don’t Know
Oral argument has not yet been scheduled, and a D.C. Circuit decision is not expected until 2027 at the earliest, according to MacRumors. The remedies currently remain in force during the appeal, meaning Google must comply with the data-sharing and syndication requirements while the case proceeds.
A separate federal antitrust case — the ad-tech monopoly suit filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Judge Leonie Brinkema found in April 2025 that Google illegally monopolized publisher ad servers and ad exchanges — also awaits its own remedies ruling. Observers have indicated mid-2026 is the most likely window for that decision.
Analysis
The brief’s legal strategy is to attack Mehta’s ruling at the liability level, not merely the remedies. If the D.C. Circuit finds the underlying monopoly determination was flawed, the remedies collapse with it. That makes Google’s appeal structurally more aggressive than a typical remedies challenge — it asks the court to reconsider whether Google’s default-placement payments constituted exclusionary conduct at all, a question the industry has watched since the government’s theory was first articulated in 2020.
The case carries particular weight because the D.C. Circuit is the same court that overturned the government’s requested breakup of Microsoft in 2001 — the last time the U.S. government sought to restructure a dominant technology platform. Whether the court applies a similarly skeptical lens to the search-monopoly remedies, or concludes that digital markets require more assertive intervention, will shape antitrust enforcement against large technology platforms for years to come.
As previously reported, Google is navigating simultaneous antitrust exposure across two U.S. federal courts and the European Commission — a concentration of legal pressure without recent precedent in the technology industry.