Tech god-kings like Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai tend to win in the courts when it matters, and there’s little chance that’s about to change, but there’s at least a glimmer of hope suddenly.

Legal filings reported Tuesday by Bloomberg shows that the judgment from September last year where Google basically has to continue as a monopoly without significant consequences can get another view. The entity that originally filed the lawsuit against Google, which includes several states and the Department of Justice, is appealing that decision. Should that make you optimistic? Maybe not, but at least it happened.

In August 2024, District Judge Amit P. Mehta ruled—to the surprise of many—that Google is a monopolist. Google, it was determined, acted illegally to maintain its grip on the search market.

Google controls 90% of the search engine market, and does it stay on top like this by being the best? Anecdotally, you probably answered that question with something like “no!” or “no more!” Google results pages are filled with spam and AI output Americans not big fans ofalthough they also report reading it without clicking to check the source articles they have taken from.

Google has maintained its crown through some bad, but real, payola-like deals $20 billion to Apple and $8 billion in four years to Samsung—which requires hardware manufacturers to make Google the default search engine on the gadget you’re probably using to read this article.

Considering Google has been determined by a legal ruling to be a monopoly, some reasonable remedies may be to force Google to end this pay-to-play practice. It may also force sales of Chrome, the most popular internet browser.

But instead of having teeth, we got a decision that should be better than the best case scenario that Google had in mind: forcing it to share some of its search data with competitors, and limiting the exclusivity of its paid deals with companies like Apple and Samsung while still allowing such exclusivity deals (as the New York Times notes, this piece both benevolent and confusing).

So what does the appeal mean? It really just means that normal and predictable things will happen in response to a major judgment. The US Court of Appeals for DC it will probably take a year to reach a decision after a case reaches this point. The original remedies that monopoly haters wanted, a forced sale of Chrome, or the banning of payola-seeking deals, are theoretically back on the table. But in the event that there is a judgment that brings down a harsher solution, of course it is the right of Alphabet Inc. to proceed with the appeal process.