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Google Asks Judge to Pause Data-Sharing Order While Appealing Antitrust Ruling

By  |  January 18, 2026

Alphabet’s Google has asked a federal judge to temporarily halt an order requiring the company to share certain data with competitors while it appeals a landmark antitrust decision, according to Reuters. The request was laid out in court filings submitted on Friday.

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    The move follows a 2024 ruling by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, who found that Google had engaged in unlawful conduct to preserve its dominance in online search, per Reuters. Google has said it plans to ask a federal appeals court to overturn that decision, arguing that the judge’s remedies went beyond what was necessary to address competitive concerns.

    In its filing, Google contended that the requirement to share data with rivals — including companies developing generative artificial intelligence products such as OpenAI — could force it to reveal sensitive information. According to Reuters, the company warned that such disclosures could not be undone if the ruling were later reversed on appeal, potentially putting its trade secrets at risk.

    As a result, Google asked Judge Mehta to pause the data-sharing portion of the ruling while the appeal is ongoing. The company did not seek to delay other aspects of the decision, including limits on certain contracts that allow Google to preload its applications, such as the Gemini AI chatbot, on devices for more than one year.

    Read more: Google Asks Judge to Reject Media Company Claims Over AI Search Overviews

    “Although Google believes that these remedies are unwarranted and should never have been imposed, it is prepared to do everything short of turning over its data or providing syndicated results and ads while its appeal is pending,” the company said in the court papers.

    Despite the court’s finding that Google holds multiple illegal monopolies, the company has so far avoided the most severe consequences sought by U.S. antitrust authorities, according to Reuters. The U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of states that brought the case have until February 3 to decide whether to appeal Judge Mehta’s rejection of stronger remedies.

    Those enforcers had pushed for more aggressive measures, including forcing Google to divest its Chrome browser and to end multibillion-dollar payments to Apple and other companies that agree to make Google the default search engine on new devices, per Reuters.

    Source: Reuters