A court ruling in a landmark DOJ antitrust case against Google found the company operates a Google Search monopoly. That lawsuit confirmed reports that Google has been paying Apple sums amounting to $20 billion a year for Google Search to be the default search engine on iPhone. That’s just one of the findings in the case which will see its finality this year.
The court has to impose measures that Google will have to respect, likely after another round of appeals. Until then, the government and Google are back in court for the final weeks of hearings leading to a verdict.
The DOJ is asking for significant remedies for Google. Selling Google Chrome is one option the Department of Justice has considered. If that fails, decoupling Android from Google might be another. Unsurprisingly, Google doesn’t like any of that, and it’ll try to save its monopoly in court.
In the age of AI, Google has another big problem that might impact its case in the Google Search antitrust lawsuit. Google paid “enormous sums” of money to Samsung to have the Galaxy AI assistant preloaded on Samsung Galaxy S25 phones (and later models).
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That’s right, Google seems to be engaging in the same kind of lucrative deals that helped it prop up Google Search on smartphones. It’s doing it with AI, the evolution of online search, and it’s doing it amid a massive lawsuit aiming to stop such behavior. Google, of course, disputes that.
Hey Gemini, define “enormous sums”
“Google has agreed with its partner, Samsung, to pay an enormous sum of money in a fixed monthly payment, as well as additional payments, activation bonuses, and ad-revenue payments,” DOJ attorney David Dahlquist told the court on Monday during his opening statement, per AdWeek.
“This is the monopolist playbook at work.”
“Google wants to expressly carve out their GenAI products so that they can repeat the monopoly playbook on those products going forward,” Dahlquist said. “The risk of excluding GenAI, as well as Gemini [from remedies], is too great.”
Dahlquist did not reveal actual figures but said the Google-Samsung deal is “remarkably similar to the exclusionary contracts the court previously ruled illegal.” That can’t mean Google is paying Samsung sums similar to Apple’s $20+ billion paydays. But then again, the initial deals between Google and Apple were much smaller, ballooning to $20 billion a year in recent years.
Gemini on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR
The Google-Samsung deal started in January, before the Galaxy S25 series launch. The deal made Gemini AI the default assistant on Samsung’s flagships. Business Korea says the deal is set to run for at least two years, with a possible extension in 2028. It’s likely that all Samsung Galaxy flagships set to launch during the contract period will have Gemini AI preinstalled.
The DOJ urges the court not to ignore Google’s new Gemini AI deals when considering remedies that Google will have to implement to stop being a Search monopolist.
“This court’s remedy should be forward-looking and not ignore what is on the horizon,” Dahlquist said, per Reuters. He was referring to the era of AI products, including chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini that can browse the web for you.
Google is very afraid
In his opening statement, Google’s lawyer, John Schmidtlein, countered that the DOJ’s remedy proposals amount to “a wishlist for competitors looking to get the benefits of Google’s extraordinary innovations.”
AI rivals “would like handouts as well even though they are competing just fine,” he added, explaining that products like Gemini AI are outside the scope of the case.
Google published another blog post on Sunday to defend its Google Search monopoly, where it addressed the AI component arguing that any measures against Gemini would hold back American innovation:
DOJ’s proposal would also hamstring how we develop AI and have a government-appointed committee regulate the design and development of our products. That would hold back American innovation at a critical juncture. We’re in a fiercely competitive global race with China for the next generation of technology leadership, and Google is at the forefront of American companies making scientific and technological breakthroughs.
Google defends its Search-related products and behavior in the blog, insisting that the DOJ’s proposals will make it harder for people to use Google Search, including on mobile devices, “raise prices and slow innovations,” and even hurt device makers and web browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox.
The company also says the DOJ’s proposal would force Google to share “our most sensitive and private search queries with companies you may never have heard of, jeopardizing your privacy and security.”
Also, splitting off Chrome and Android, which Google “built at great cost over many years and make available for free,” would break these platforms, “hurt businesses built on them, and undermine security.”
Gemini 2.5 is Google’s new AI model. Image source: Google
The blog post reads like Google is a tiny startup fighting for survival, not a multi-billion-dollar corporation that got where it is right now because it was able to exploit an undisputedly great online search tool for money.
But Google is definitely not the great privacy protector it claims to be in this blog post. Also, products like Chrome and Android being free are part of the Google Search monopoly problem. Google made them free to keep Search relevant everywhere, especially on mobile.
As for “free,” there’s no such thing as free. One pays for Google apps, operating systems, and AI with one’s data. The same goes for Gemini AI on Samsung phones. It’s why Google can afford enormous sums of money.
Finally, people who love Google Search will not suddenly be unable to use it if the court blocks deals like the Google-Apple or Google-Samsung contracts, which involve huge sums of money.
There’s no question that Google Search, Chrome, and Gemini are great products that many internet and AI users will choose over competitors, even if these products weren’t shoved in their faces. Google doesn’t have to run a monopoly to offer great products.
