Apple’s Google Search Deal Is Back Under Fire as DOJ Appeals Antitrust Ruling

Apple’s lucrative search partnership with Google may be facing another round of scrutiny.

After a federal judge ruled last year that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in online search but still allowed it to keep paying Apple to remain the default search engine on Apple devices, the U.S. Department of Justice and several states are now appealing that decision. The move could reopen questions about how much of Google’s deal with Apple should have survived in the first place.

How We Got Here

Back in August 2024, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google had used illegal tactics to maintain its dominance in the U.S. search market. A major part of that finding focused on Google’s exclusionary agreements with partners like Apple, which the court said had clear anticompetitive effects.

That ruling kicked off a lengthy remedies phase that stretched nearly a year. During that time, witnesses from Google, the government, and partner companies including Apple weighed in on what penalties or structural changes might be appropriate. Everything from forcing Google to spin off Chrome to banning exclusive default search deals was on the table.

It was during one of those hearings that Apple’s senior vice president of services, Eddy Cue, made headlines by downplaying the long-term importance of the Google deal. Cue suggested that AI could eventually make traditional search, and even the iPhone itself, far less relevant.

The Ruling That Favored Google

In September, Judge Mehta issued his final remedies decision, and it largely went Google’s way.

As we reported at the time, the ruling spelled out exactly what Google could and could not do when it comes to its relationship with Apple.

What is allowed

Apple’s search partnership with Google may continue. Judge Mehta rejected a blanket “payment ban,” finding it would harm partners and consumers. For this reason, Google gets to keep paying Apple to be the default, albeit not exclusive, search engine on Safari.
Google can still pay browser developers, including Apple, for default status as long as browsers can promote rival search engines, set different defaults by OS version or private mode, and change defaults annually.
The court found that choice screens did not meaningfully improve competition. As a result, Apple will not be required to add new search choice UIs in Safari or iOS.
Contracts cannot block partners from distributing generative AI tools. In practice, this means Apple can promote or integrate non-Google assistants or chatbots even while Google Search remains Safari’s default.

What is not allowed

No exclusivity, including for generative AI products or features. Google cannot require Apple to block rivals or tie one Google service to another.
No exclusivity-adjacent incentives. Google cannot offer higher revenue shares or bonuses in exchange for exclusivity or bundling multiple Google apps.
A strict 12-month limit on defaults. Google cannot condition revenue sharing on keeping any Google service as the default for more than a year, giving competitors an annual chance to bid.

The court issued its final judgment in December. Google appealed that ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last month and also asked for parts of the decision to be put on hold during the appeal process.

Now the DOJ Is Appealing Too

New court filings show that the Department of Justice and a coalition of states are also appealing the ruling.

From the filing:

NOTICE OF CROSS-APPEAL

Notice is hereby given that the United States of America, the State of Arkansas, the State of California, the State of Florida, the State of Georgia, the State of Indiana, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the State of Louisiana, the State of Michigan, the State of Missouri, the State of Montana, the State of South Carolina, the State of Texas, and the State of Wisconsin, plaintiffs in the above-named case, hereby cross-appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from the final judgment of this Court entered on December 5, 2025, and all orders in this action merged into that final judgment.

It’s still unclear which specific parts of Judge Mehta’s decision the DOJ and states plan to challenge, but the appeal suggests they may push to undo more of the ruling than Google’s opponents were able to at the trial level. That could potentially include parts of the Apple deal that were left standing.

Google has not yet commented on the cross-appeal. Apple is also expected to stay quiet unless the terms of its search agreement are directly threatened again.

For now, nothing changes. Appeals in a case this large move slowly, and the D.C. Circuit is unlikely to issue a decision until later this year at the earliest. Still, the fight over who controls default search on the iPhone is far from over.

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Jamie Spencer

Jamie has been blogging about tech, making money online and entrepreneurship for the past 12 years. He is the proud owner of hugely successful website makeawebsitehub.com and has helped over 20k people start their own blogs.