Google has appealed a landmark antitrust ruling that branded the company a monopolist in online search. In a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, the tech giant asked the court to reverse the 2024 decision by Judge Amit P. Mehta, who found that Google broke antitrust law by paying companies like Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine on phones and browsers.

The Department of Justice first sued Google in 2020, arguing the company abused its dominance to lock out rivals. Judge Mehta stopped short of breaking up Google but ordered the company to share some data with competitors, including Microsoft's Bing and OpenAI's ChatGPT. The government also won a separate ad tech antitrust case, with a ruling on remedies expected this year.

Google calls the judge's antitrust finding an error and argues its search engine rose through legitimate innovation. The appeal extends a yearslong legal fight that produced the first major antitrust action against a tech giant in the modern internet era. For investors, the outcome could reshape how Google monetizes its search business going forward.