Google will not be forced to break up its search business, but a federal judge has tentatively ordered other changes to the tech giant’s business practices to keep it from further anticompetitive behavior.

U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta outlined remedies on Tuesday that would bar Google from entering or maintaining exclusive deals that tie the distribution of Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or Gemini to other apps or revenue arrangements. For example, Google wouldn’t be able to condition Play Store licensing on the distribution of certain apps, or tie revenue-share payments to keeping certain apps.

Google will also have to share certain search index and user-interaction data with “qualified competitors” to prevent exclusionary behavior, and it must offer search and search ad syndication services to competitors at standard rates so they can deliver quality results while building their own technology.

Mehta has not yet issued a final judgment. Instead, he ordered Google and the Department of Justice to “meet and confer” and submit a revised final judgment by September 10 that aligns with his opinion.

The behavioral remedies come a year after Mehta ruled that Google acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search. A technical committee will be established to help enforce the final judgment, which will last six years and go into effect 60 days after entry.

The DOJ, which filed its antitrust suit against Google in 2020, had advocated for stronger penalties. It wanted to force Google to divest its Chrome browser and possibly Android, which resulted in some unsolicited acquisition bids, and end its agreements with Apple, Samsung, and other partners in which the tech giant paid those companies billions to make its search engine appear as the default choice on their devices and web browsers.

Apple stock popped after-hours on the news that it could continue its lucrative agreement with Google. Google spent more than $26 billion in 2021 alone to secure default search placements on devices, and about $18 billion of that spend went solely to Apple, with whom Google shares 36% of its search ad revenue from Safari. The next year, Google paid Apple more than $20 billion, per the terms of its distribution agreement.

During the trial, the judge emphasized that because most users stick with the default, those placements are “extremely valuable real estate” that effectively locked rivals out and knee-capped their ability to challenge Google’s monopoly.

The DOJ also called on Judge Mehta to force Google to share its search index, user-side data, synthetic queries, and ads data with competitors under privacy-protected terms.

Google, which has maintained roughly a 90% market share over the traditional search market for the last decade, has argued that the government’s proposals would stifle innovation, jeopardize user privacy, and undercut the company’s ability to invest in R&D. CEO Sundar Pichai said during the remedies hearing in April that forced data-sharing would act as “de facto divestiture” for Google Search. 

During the remedies hearing in April, Judge Mehta suggested he would consider Europe’s Digital Markets Act as a reference point. The DMA requires Google to share certain click and query data with third parties. Mehta’s order, by contrast, is narrower and temporary, unlike the DMA’s ongoing obligations. It’s also much more limited than the sweeping access the DOJ requested, which potentially included source code, full search ranking algorithms, and broader infrastructure elements, which Google has said would essentially give away its entire intellectual property. 

“This has inspired a big debate about whether Europeans with the Digital Markets Act have it right,” William Kovacic, a global competition law professor at George Washington University and former Federal Trade Commission commissioner, told TechCrunch. “That is, do you need descriptive rules, or do you rely on the technical case by case adjudication?” 

Put another way: “Does the European experience tell us something about feasibility and implementation here. Does it tell us something about what Google can live with?”

That same question around how far regulators should go in reshaping Google’s business will also loom large in the tech giant’s other antitrust battles.

Judge Mehta’s decision may also affect the outcome of a separate antitrust trial Google is currently engaged in in relation to its advertising technology business. In April 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema found that Google illegally monopolized ad-tech markets. The remedies trial is scheduled for late September and will focus on the DOJ’s proposed divestitures and other measures. 

“We’ve never had a circumstance in which the Department of Justice has had two largely parallel cases involving major elements of alleged misconduct against the same dominant firm with two parallel remedy processes going ahead,” Kovacic said.

Kovacic added that even though Mehta has released his much-anticipated remedies, “there are many acts to this play to go” in the form of Google’s appeal and potential escalation to the Supreme Court. “It won’t be over until late 2027 or early 2028,” he said.

This story is developing. Check back in for updates.

Waymo announced Tuesday that it’s going to bring both of its vehicles — the Jaguar I-Pace SUV and the Zeekr van — to Denver and Seattle starting this week, the latest move in a continued expansion across the United States.

The vehicles will be manually driven to start, before the company starts testing its autonomous tech in both cities. Waymo told TechCrunch that it hopes to start offering robotaxi trips in Denver next year and the Seattle metropolitan area “as soon as we’re permitted to do so.” Denver and Seattle will be two of the most extreme-weather cities that Waymo is feeling out, giving it a chance to test out its tech in snow, wind, and rain that is harder to come by in places like Phoenix.

The new cities join a growing list of places where Waymo is operating in the U.S. Just last week the company announced that it has more than 2,000 robotaxis in its commercial fleet countrywide, with 800 in the San Francisco Bay Area, 500 in Los Angeles, 400 in Phoenix, 100 in Austin, and “dozens” in Atlanta. Waymo has also announced plans to launch a commercial robotaxi services in Dallas, Miami, and Washington, D.C., next year, and recently received a permit to start testing in New York City.

That’s not to mention the other cities where Waymo has dipped its toes. It’s brought vehicles on “road trips” to places like Philadelphia and plans to do the same in Las Vegas, San Diego, Houston, Orlando, and San Antonio.

I want to be clear from the outset. I’ve never been a car enthusiast. My driving history includes a hand-me-down Volvo with a hole in the floorboards and a series of aggressively practical vehicles, including a VW Golf and a Mazda SUV in which I hauled my family around for 12 years. Then I leased a BMW i4 electric car.

What drew me to the i4? Unlike other electric vehicles, BMWs don’t look like something out of the Jetsons; I like that they’re understated cars that happen to be electric. I liked that they’re far less common than other EVs in Northern California. Plus, the i4 comes in something like a dozen colors, including “Brooklyn Gray,” which – I know I sound ridiculous – delighted me in ways that Tesla’s handful of options never could. I’d read online that early adopters were having software issues, but with visions of my sleek new BMW dancing in my head, I conveniently filed that information away. Those first few drives felt exhilarating, too. The car was beautiful, the ride was smooth, and I felt like we were going places.

Nearly two years later, I’m doing something I never thought I’d do: eagerly awaiting the end of a lease on a luxury car because its software is such a disaster that it makes my rusted-out Volvo look like a paragon of reliability.

A love story gone awry

Let me count the ways this relationship has gone wrong, starting with the most basic function: getting into my own car. On multiple occasions, I’ve stood in parking lots, unable to unlock its doors with my phone despite the BMW Digital Key being specifically designed for this purpose. This sounds trivial until you’re juggling melting groceries while looking like you’re trying to steal your own car.

Digital key issues have become so widespread that BMW owners have at times shared elaborate multi-step workarounds that read like instructions for disarming a bomb: “1. Open the BMW app on your phone and use it to unlock the door. 2. Sign in with your BMW ID in iDrive. 3. Place your iPhone in the vehicle’s charging tray. 4. Wait for the digital key to reappear in the Wallet app. 5. Double-click the side button, authenticate with Face ID, and—finally—start the car.”

The user profile system is another exercise in futility. I’ve been unable to create guest profiles without being demoted to the bottom of the user hierarchy. What this means in practice is that if anyone else drives my car – even once – the vehicle will grab their phone and playlist the moment they’re within Bluetooth range. BMW has over-engineered their profile system to the point where it requires explicit linking steps that should really happen automatically.

The car’s CarPlay integration ranges from poor to actively dangerous. Software updates routinely break CarPlay functionality, requiring complete reboots of its iDrive infotainment system. The reverse camera issue is particularly maddening; put the car in reverse while using CarPlay navigation, and when you shift back to drive, you’re dumped onto the home screen instead of returning to your directions. 

The backup camera itself is practically useless in low light conditions, and the screen frequently becomes scorching hot to the touch.

Then there’s the lights issue. Unless I remember to manually lock the car after walking away from it, I’ll occasionally notice later that the exterior lights are still ablaze in my driveway. I thought it might be human error the first time it happened. By the third time, I realized that it’s a “feature” where the i4 enters a “pseudo-sleep mode” that keeps lights and other systems running indefinitely. Multiple owners report the same issue: park the car, walk away, return later to find their vehicle lit up like a beacon and draining the battery. 

Beyond the feeling on a near-daily basis that the car has amnesia, there are legitimate safety concerns. The 2022 i4 was subject to six recalls in its first year, including one so serious that BMW told owners their cars were fire risks when parked and advised them to “stop driving this vehicle immediately.” Since then, other recalls have included battery control units that can cause a sudden loss of power.

BMW releases software updates for the i4 approximately every few months, but the process is fraught with issues. Updates routinely break connected services, causing owners to lose access to traffic information, weather data, remote parking functions, and even the MyBMW app connectivity. 

The over-the-air update system itself is unreliable, with owners reporting updates that get stuck at various percentages for days, forcing trips to dealers for manual installation. 

What’s especially galling is that BMW positions these vehicles as premium products. If you’re buying rather than leasing, the i4 starts at over $50,000, with well-equipped models pushing $70,000 or more. Meanwhile, owners of less expensive vehicles, including Hyundais and Lexus models, report bulletproof connectivity and seamless user experiences. 

I’m not saying the company rushed these cars to market without adequately testing their digital ecosystem, then decided to treat their customers as beta testers without taking their well-being into account, but I’m also not not saying that.

I genuinely wanted this relationship to work. The i4 is gorgeous, drives beautifully, and represents everything I thought I wanted in an electric vehicle. But I can’t continue a relationship where the most basic functions – unlocking doors, connecting my phone, getting directions – require the patience of a saint. (I do not have the patience of a saint.)

Even my tech-savvy husband, who is usually the first to suggest user error, recently emerged from the car after a particularly frustrating software meltdown and announced that he would “need to meditate for a bit.”

Car ownership shouldn’t be a constant source of aggravation. I shouldn’t have to maintain a mental database of workarounds for features that should just work. I shouldn’t dread software updates because they might break something that was (mostly) functional.

So BMW, I’ve had it. You made a gorgeous car, then sabotaged it with software so crummy that it’s almost comical. I thought we’d drive into the sunset together. Instead, I’m driving my i4 back to the dealership as my lease is over. I’m surprised to say I can’t wait.