• by Wendy Davis , February 6, 2026

Consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge is urging a federal judge to reject Google's request to lift orders requiring it to share some data about users' searches with "qualified" competitors and to provide syndicated search results and ads to those competitors.

Google has argued to U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta in Washington, D.C. that those mandates should be stayed for several reasons, including that they would jeopardize users' privacy.

But Public Knowledge -- which advocates for an open internet -- contends that Google's argument "overstates the privacy risk and ignores the safeguards the final judgment provides."

"The user-side data subject to disclosure consists of anonymized and aggregated information about queries and user interactions," Public Knowledge writes in a proposed friend-of-the-court brief filed with Mehta on Thursday.

The organization's papers come in an antitrust battle dating to 2020, when the federal Department of Justice and a coalition of states accused Google of obtaining dominance in search 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 ruled against Google in August 2024, writing that the company violated antitrust law by maintaining 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 is now seeking 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.)

Last month, 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.

"The public interest dictates that appellate review should occur before the private search queries of Google users are shared without their consent and before innovation and investment are permanently warped by compelled data disclosures and syndication," Google wrote.

The company added that forcing it to license ads to "qualified competitors" would expose advertisers to harm, arguing that the requirement would weaken its ability "to detect fraudulent schemes perpetrated on syndication and sub-syndication."

The Justice Department and states countered that Google's motion was premature, noting that the mandates won't take effect until after the technical committee issues standards.

Public Knowledge -- which argued that Mehta's remedies order isn't tough enough -- says in its friend-of-the-court brief that the order has enough safeguards to protect users' privacy.

"The final judgment requires that privacy and security safeguards be applied before any disclosure," Public Knowledge writes, adding that the technical committee will consult with the antitrust enforcers and recommend "appropriate measures."

Public Knowledge additionally argues that the order's safeguards are "at least as protective as Google’s commercial data sharing with advertisers."

"Google shares detailed user information with advertisers to power its core business model," Public Knowledge claims. "It uses query data to train machine learning models. It syncs data across devices and services."

Mehta hasn't yet said when he will rule on Google's request.