• by Wendy Davis , May 8, 2026

A federal judge on Thursday denied Google's request to immediately pause an order requiring it to share data about users' searches with "qualified" competitors and to provide syndicated search results and ads to those competitors, ruling that the company's application for a stay is premature.

But U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C. said in an eight-page order that Google can renew the request at a later date.

Mehta essentially ruled that Google can't presently prove it will be "irreparably harmed" without a stay, given that specifics regarding implementation remain unsettled.

"As of today, neither the court nor the parties have any concrete point of reference for the harms the data-sharing and syndication provisions may precipitate," he wrote. "Key details such as license terms, security and privacy safeguards, and who the qualified competitors will be are far from established."

The ruling comes in an antitrust battle dating to 2020, when the federal Department of Justice and a coalition of states accused Google of violating anti-monopoly laws by contracting to be the default search engine in Mozilla's Firefox browser and Apple's Safari browser, and to have its search engine preinstalled on Android smartphones.

Mehta sided against Google in August 2024, ruling that the company maintained a monopoly in two markets: general search services, and search text ads.

In September 2025, Mehta issued a remedies order that includes the data sharing and syndication mandates that Google sought to stay.

The order calls for a technical committee to implement the mandate -- including by establishing privacy protections. (The order also prohibits Google from entering into exclusive distribution contracts for Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant and the Gemini app for six years.)

In January, Google initiated an appeal of Mehta's ruling, and asked him to halt the data-sharing and syndication mandates pending appeal. The company argued that the disclosures could hurt search advertisers, and threaten users' privacy.

Government antitrust enforcers opposed Google's request, arguing it's premature because the data-sharing and syndication mandates won't take effect for many months.