That shift comes down to generative AI. At the liability trial, no one saw chatbots as a threat. Today, tens of millions use ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity to search for information they once typed into Google. The court concluded that, for the first time in decades, new players are putting pressure on Google from the outside.

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a shake-up of Google’s search engine in an attempt to curb the corrosive power of an illegal monopoly while rebuffing the U.S. government’s attempt to break up the company and impose other restraints.

Alphabet’s Google does not have to sell its Chrome web browser but must share some of its search and other data with competitors, a federal judge decided in the Justice Department’s landmark case against the search giant.