A US court has ordered Google to share its search data with competitors, giving AI firms and other tech companies the resources they need to build rival search products.

The ruling, issued by Judge Amit Mehta on September 3, is part of an ongoing antitrust case and aims to lower barriers for companies developing alternatives to Google Search.

Google will not be forced to sell its Chrome browser or Android operating system and can continue paying companies like Apple to keep its search engine as the default.

Industry experts say that, despite the data-sharing requirement, building a consumer-facing search engine that can compete with Google will require significant time and capital.

AI startups such as OpenAI and Perplexity have begun developing their own search and browser tools, and Microsoft and Apple could also expand their search efforts as a result of the order.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Data access alone won’t level the competitive playing field

The court’s data-sharing requirement sounds significant, but the practical barriers to challenging Google remain enormous even with access to its search data.

Building competitive search infrastructure requires what experts call “astronomically expensive” resources, and the current results prove this point 1.

Despite massive venture funding, AI-powered competitors like ChatGPT and Perplexity have captured only 0.13% of global search traffic combined as of 2025, though this represents a four-fold increase from 2024 2.

Even well-capitalized companies with experienced leadership struggle to translate data access into meaningful market penetration.

The ruling essentially provides a foundation that competitors must still build upon with massive capital investments and years of development time.

2️⃣ Market dynamics are shifting independent of regulatory pressure

Google’s dominance is facing its first serious challenge since 2015, but it’s coming from changing user behavior rather than court orders.

Google’s global search market share dropped below 90% for the first time since 2015, declining from 94.80% in 2024 to 93.05% in 2025 32.

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