I, Blake, do swear, to honour the forces of the free market.
Therefore, I must honour the court’s call.
I agree with Judge Amit Mehta. Google kept its insane dominance in search by buying distribution and writing contracts that kept any competing rival out. Now, they have a chance to compete.
It’s game time Perplexity, Apple, DuckDuck Go, Bing (lol). Copilot, Gemini, Siri, Comet, now Dia (Atlassian’s recent buy). But seriously, the number of entrants, competitors and now potential winners is crazy.
You’ve got new data pipes. You’ve got new rails. Time to show why you belong here.
That’s it, my opinion. Article over.
Well, not really.
The devils in the detail, and whilst fundamentally that is my opinion, strap in, we’re leaving no stone unturned.
What the court actually did
Ok basically, there’s three rulings that matter. With my own creative spins on the names.
Ruling 1: Me, Myself and I
Any binding contracts that blocked OEMs, carriers, and browsers from shipping or promoting a rival beside Google are no longer legally enforceable.
So, when you search on Safari and a google search comes up, it could be a different search engine. Right now, it stays Google, but now, it doesn’t have to.
Cue the dramatic voice over *On the next episode of who owns safari search*.
Consider me subscribed.
Ruling 2: Share your toys, Google
Google must share its index.
That is, the giant catalogue of the public web that powers results. The ruling requires Google to share controlled access to that catalogue with rivals, not hand over everything at once. In practice that means they can rate limit, sample, and add latency so rivals get useful signals without real-time, raw logs. It won’t magically equalise quality on day one.
Like anything, I want what I want, when I want, fast. Coverage, freshness, and ranking craft still going to decide winners.
Ruling 3: “Hey Google, err, I mean Gemini”
This one’s pretty interesting. Very AI, very 2025 and props to the judge, a particularly smart ruling.
The days of the ten blue links are over. AI assistants are in. Agents are in.
In the ruling. These count as search. The same rules. Nice try google, you can’t shift the old game inside of Gemini. I imagine it went something like this:
Judge: Show me what’s in your left hand, Google
Google: What, this one? Nothing?
Judge: No, the other hand
Google: Oh, you mean my other, left hand.
So, exclusive distribution inside assistants is banned.
That means Gemini, tomorrow’s Siri, Co-pilot (lol, again), Comet or any other, fast growing VC fuelled “ask me” gateway drug. Browsers that behave like assistants for work sit in the blast radius of this logic too. If the browser is the answer surface, distribution rules will follow it. Dia might be poised to take advantage (more on this later).
What it didn’t do
Big, but less interesting on the surface.
No divestiture of Chrome or Android.
It leaves Chrome and Android intact. Probably a good thing given Apple’s own monopoly. Who can stand up to a bully? Another bully of course!
No national choice‑screen standard in the United States.
In translation, a choice screen is a setup page that asks you to pick your search engine. You tap one. That becomes your default. They don’t need to show one. Simple. Default usually wins as choice requires effort and there’s a reason people stay with their bank and electricity provider.
Apathy. Laziness. Yep, same.
Default payments can continue when they are non‑exclusive.
We spoke about this. Google. Safari. You got it. No need to replay.
It’s a good move
Fundamentally, any heavy remedy imposed would risk reversal.
More court battles. More Lamborghinis for the lawyers.
Better to stop the clearest violations of conduct, open a fresh, hot data pipe and avoid ripping out the core services people use all the time.
Imagine they got rid of maps.
*shudder*
What changes in the next year
Near term, I think everything will look familiar.
Most will keep typing into the same box. No one is going to click “I am feeling lucky” (what even what that, anyway).
The early changes are realistically going to sit in setup flows and prompts.
When you set up a new Android phone in Europe, you’ll see a simple page that says “Pick your search engine.” It will use normal words, not a T&C that you will 1000% skip and say you read. You will tap one. That becomes your default from day one.
Some phones will ship with two search boxes on the home screen. One is Google. The other could be Bing, DuckDuckGo, or an AI answer box. Both are live. You pick which one to tap each time. I think this is a little meh from a UX perspective. Let’s see how it plays out.
When you ask the assistant a quick question, you’ll get the answer in the chat window. No browser tab opens. Great for weather, unit conversions, simple facts, flight status, calendar checks. Weirdly, I use Siri for this. Yes, Siri can actually do something useful, go figure.
If Apple rolls out answers inside Siri or Safari, you’ll get results without leaving Apple’s screen (more on this below!)
The moves that matter
Ok so, what’s happened has happened.
In parallel, there’s some major players making moves. This will only ignite their thirst for power. Let’s have a quick squiz.
The Apple answer layer
Apple has a team focused on an in‑house answer engine. Codename World Knowledge Answers.
Think web‑aware responses in Siri and Safari that resolve common tasks without a trip to an external engine. Kinda like ChatGPT.
If quality lands (which I used to say, it does with Apple), the first hop moves from a Safari address bar to an Apple‑controlled prompt. That would raise Apple’s leverage even if the declared default remains the same.
This just got announced, so how it manifests itself is anyone’s guess right now.
What I do know is that it’s built around three core components. A planner, a search system for the web and the device and a summariser.
The planner interprets voice or text input and decides how to respond.
The search system scans the web or device.
The summariser pulls it together into an answer.
Weirdly, they’re in talks with both Google and Anthropic to be point 3, the summariser.
OpenAI is not in consideration. Odd, given their Apple Intelligence partnership.
Perplexity Comet Plus
Perplexity launched Comet, a desktop browser that returns an answer with linked citations from the open web, forums, and news. It followed with Comet Plus, a paid plan that shares revenue with participating publishers.
I’ve previously written about Perplexity Comet plus here. Give it a read if you’re interested.
If answer engines want durable supply of, well, answers, they must fund it. The margin math is still in play. The direction is right. But, in short, it could be Google 2.0.
OpenAI hardens search inside chat
ChatGPT chat turned into search.
That shift changes user habits as much as any setting inside a browser.
I use ChatGPT habitually now. More than Google. The fight becomes quality, trust, and speed inside the chat pane.
Game on.
Whoever wins, so does the consumer experience.
Microsoft Copilot to Captain
Copilot is turning up in more places.
Sorry, Copilot is good. It’s just not great.
As placement grows in TV’s, OS, Devices, it gets a shot at winning repeat tasks that live inside a workday. It may win. But really, yawn. It’s the company that created teams.
I like Microsoft, but please step up in UX.
Welcome, Atlassian to the race
We love a last minute addition.
Atlassian just bought The Browser Company for about US$610 million and wants Dia to be a browser built for work.
What a power move. For many, the home page of the workday.
If your tickets, docs and approvals live inside Jira and Confluence, the browser that understands that graph controls the first click, the query, and the handoff. That is also giving Google 2.0 energy, without the ads.
Distribution matters. Atlassian has it in certain domains.
Underdog? No.
Someone I would bet on. Eh, also no.
I’m yet to find anyone that loves using Jira. They also just bought cycle.app, a design led tool for product discovery, so many they’re leaning back into UX and design.
Watch this space.
Some changes are still being considered
The open‑web ad stack is a separate fight.
A court has already found Google a monopolist in key ad tech functions. The following remedies are not final yet.
The Department of Justice is pushing proposals like splitting the ad exchange from Google’s buy/sell tools, creating data walls, and pushing audits. Those are proposals on the table heading into the remedies phase, but are not court-ordered changes today.
For brevity’s sake, I won’t go into this battle. What happens here also matters, but it’s more about the revenue of google for the world of today, not tomorrow.
Like the judges ruling, this piece is more about tomorrow’s new reality. Let’s stay focused.
The next 12 to 24 months
Okay, let’s discuss what changes in the near future.
Apple builds and guides, subtly
Apple will most likely roll out a web‑aware answer pane inside Siri. Most likely, only where it can guarantee quality. My thinking, anything to do with device help, sport’s scores, weather, quick facts, calendar and travel status of apps installed on your phone.
Google remains the declared default. Real routing for specific intents tilts to Apple UX once satisfaction is high.
Getting access to a data API from Google wont really help here. But, Apple’s leverage will grow, even if Google’s headline share hardly moves.
Subtle. Calculated. Kinda boring really.
In this world of ‘move fast and break things’, potentially not a good option.
Let’s see.
Microsoft and the big labs convert access into visible quality
Bing answer quality improves on a basket of popular intents, helped by those sweet, sweet index snapshots and query signals. Plus Copilot placement on more screens. Better than Clippy showing up, I guess.
An AI answer engine proves the publisher purse
Perplexity’s Comet Plus tests whether a high share of subscription revenue can stabilise supply of content. If terms spread to other browser competitors and others match, publisher hostility cools. If not, expect a lot of licensing fights, especially in Europe. Just ask Anthropic what this is like.
Google rewrites contracts and deepens assistant placement
Contract rewrites meet non‑exclusive requirements, with more one‑year terms. Assistant features inside Android and Chrome keep usage inside Google surfaces while staying compliant.
Basically, they play within the rules.
Where I land
Props to Judge Amit Mehta.
If you open distribution, share some data, and bind the rules to the next interface, then product and preference can do the rest.
I still think the next default sits inside an assistant, not a browser.
Apple is building one. Microsoft is spreading one across screens. OpenAI turned chat into search. Perplexity wants to own the window and pay the suppliers. Dia will create a chat living inside a work browser that already knows your permissions and projects. Each have their own flare of an unfair head start.
Google lost on the law and kept most of the levers. The door is finally open. Whether anyone walks through now depends on partners and a public willing to try something that is not the blue box they grew up with.
I think the world’s going to change.
I still can’t pick a winner, but I live for the drama.
Until next time.
Blake