By James Calloway

A new Tech Policy Press analysis argues that the remedies under consideration in the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust case against Google can constrain the company's search dominance even if the court does not order a structural breakup. The essay, headlined "Search Remedies in Google Antitrust Case Can Work Even if Company Stays on Top," stakes out a position at the center of the live debate over what relief a federal judge should impose after Google was found liable for unlawfully maintaining its search monopoly.

The piece's title-thesis — that Google can stay on top if the right conduct constraints are in place — pushes back on the most aggressive remedy proposals in the public conversation. Those include any move to break off Chrome, Android, or the ad-tech stack. By defending a Google-stays-on-top outcome, the analysis aligns itself with the competition-policy camp that prefers targeted behavioral fixes over corporate surgery.

Why the remedy choice matters to search

The remedies phase of the case is the part that touches publishers, SEO practitioners, and ad-tech operators most directly. A conduct-only menu — restrictions on default-search contracts, mandated access to search index data, or limits on how Google reuses third-party content in AI-generated answers — would land differently on the search ecosystem than a forced divestiture of a major unit would. Either way, the search results page itself is the most contested surface, and any remedy the court imposes is likely to change how it works.

The Tech Policy Press essay arrives at a moment when the legal calendar is dense. The remedies phase is moving on a court-imposed schedule, with the DOJ and Google trading filings and interested third parties weighing in as amici. Each round of submissions tightens the universe of plausible outcomes and forces the search industry to model more than one future at a time.

What does the behavioral fix actually buy?

The argument that Google can keep the crown if the right guardrails are in place is not new, but the Tech Policy Press framing — that the case can succeed without breaking the company apart — is a direct answer to the more aggressive voices in the remedies debate. It also nods to the practical reality that structural breakups are slow, appealable, and frequently watered down by the time they take effect.

Conduct remedies can move on a faster timeline. A court order restricting the default-search payments at the heart of the case, or mandating access to search data, could shift market behavior in months rather than years. The essay's headline argument is that those gains are real and worth defending even if the structural option stays on the shelf.

That stance is also a hedge. A behavioral-only outcome leaves Google intact as a corporate entity, which means any guardrail the court imposes has to be specific, enforceable, and durable enough to survive appeal. Vague conduct remedies die on contact with an appellate court; tight ones can shape the market for a decade.

What to monitor next

Watch the court's remedies schedule, the next round of DOJ filings, and any Google response that signals the company's appetite for a negotiated conduct order. The Tech Policy Press essay will not be the last analysis to weigh in, and the remedies menu the court settles on will track, in part, which side of the behavioral-versus-structural debate carries the day in the public record. The next signal worth tracking: which remedy proposal, if any, the DOJ commits to in its final filing.