6 ways the Google antitrust ruling could change the internet

A federal judge said on August 5 that Google broke the law to kneecap competition in web search in ways that entrenched the company’s power. The next steps, which involve proposing legal fixes to undo Google’s behavior, are essentially about imagining an alternative future in which Google isn’t Google as we know it. We have the internet we have, and it’s hard to imagine something different or if you’d like it more, but here are six possible alternatives:

1. It’s possible that Google could be forced to let other companies access its search technology or its essential data to create search engines with the technical chops of Google—but without Google.

2. Google pays Apple many billions of dollars a year—$20 billion in 2022—to make Google the standard way to search the web on Apple’s Safari browser. The likeliest scenario is you’d need to pick whether to use Google on your iPhone or something else. But technologists and stock analysts have also speculated for years that Apple could make its own search engine.

3. Could prices go down for the products that advertise next to your searches (which is most products)? In theory, if alternative search engines get popular, there would be more competition and lower prices for the insurance providers and other companies trying to grab your attention when you search.

4. The company could break up into Baby Googles. This one seems unlikely, but the government could ask the judge to split Google into parts to fix its illegal monopoly power.

5. Google might know less about you. If Google had less information, it could be better for your privacy, and it might help other companies, including news organizations that don’t have Google’s wealth of data.

6. You might be able to download almost anything from Google’s Android app store. That might mean that you would be able to buy an Amazon Kindle e-book from its Android app, which you can’t do now. Games such as “Fortnite” that have been absent from Android phones might be available, too.