The US Department of Justice and Google are facing off in court over allegations that company is illegally maintaining its dominance in the search engine market. As a result, the DOJ is advocating for Google to sell off some of its key assets, including its Chrome browser. The hearings began April 22 and are expected to last three weeks.

This proposal has attracted interest from several tech companies, including OpenAI, Perplexity AI and Yahoo, all expressing willingness to purchase Chrome should the court mandate its sale.

The case could change how tech companies do business, as well as how people find answers to their online search queries. Government lawyers made their case in opening statements Monday, saying that Google should be forced to sell Chrome, its web browser, which pushes people to the Google search engine.

The company should also be forced to help rival search engines that it has unfairly kept out of competition, Justice Department lawyer David Dahlquist said.

«This is the time for the court to tell Google and all other monopolists who are out there listening, and they are listening, that there are consequences when you break the antitrust laws,» Dahlquist said, according to The New York Times.

Google counters

Google’s lawyers say that any remedies should only consider the company’s deals with companies such as Apple, Mozilla and Samsung to make it the default search engine for smartphones and other devices.

«Google won its place in the market fair and square,» said company attorney John Schmidtlein, according to NBC News.

Judge Amit P. Mehta, of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, is now hearing arguments and executives from major tech and artificial intelligence companies have been testifying. 

Mehta is the same judge who ruled in August that Google illegally maintained a monopoly in search. That trial, held last year, took 10 weeks and was years in the making.

«After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,» Mehta wrote in the August decision. «It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.»

After Mehta hears arguments, he’s expected to order remedies by the end of summer.

Google is currently the king of online search, with more than 89% global market share, according to GlobalStats, down slightly from 91% last summer.

A representative for Google referred CNET to the company’s online statement from before the hearings began. In it, company vice president Lee-Anne Mulholland says such sweeping remedies would harm America’s economy.

Mulholland calls the action «a backwards-looking case» and says the DOJ proposal would make it harder for users to get to preferred services, would prevent the company from competing fairly and would force Google to share users’ private search queries with other companies.

OpenAI, Perplexity and Yahoo want to buy Chrome

On Tuesday, OpenAI executive Nick Turley testified that his company would be interested in buying the Google Chrome browser if the company is forced to sell it. 

He also said that ChatGPT, OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot, is «years away from its goal of being able to use its own search technology to answer 80% of queries,» according to Reuters. Turley also testified that Google declined an attempt by OpenAI to use Google search technology within ChatGPT.

Two other companies have also expressed interesting in buying Chrome — Perplexity AI and Yahoo. 

Perplexity’s chief business officer, Dmitry Shevelenko, expressed interest in purchasing Chrome in court. 

Yahoo’s general manager of search, Brian Provost, also testified that the company is interested in acquiring Chrome. Yahoo has been developing its own browser prototype but believes that purchasing Chrome is a faster route to increasing its search market share, according to The Verge.

Potential outcomes

Many things could happen to Google, including a breakup of the company. If such a penalty were instituted, it might involve breaking off the Chrome browser or Android smartphone operating system parts of the company. 

The DOJ wants to prohibit Google from entering into exclusive agreements that makes its search engine as the default on devices and browsers. The Department of Justice also wants Google to share certain user data with competitors to level the playing field.

This would be the government’s first attempt to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since its unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft two decades ago.

Google could also be forced to make its data available to competitors or abandon the controversial economic deals that made the Google search engine the default on devices such as the iPhone.

Why does this matter?

Google is not the only company facing legal issues. Major tech companies Apple and Amazon are also facing antitrust lawsuits. An antitrust trial against Meta, owner of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, began April 14.

The trial could also affect the burgeoning artificial intelligence era. The Justice Department has said that if remedies are not imposed on Google, it expects Google to use its AI products to further extend its monopoly.

And since the August trial, presidential administrations have changed. As the Times notes, the hearings signal that the Trump administration intends to keep an eye on the changing tech industry.

Do people switch from default search engines?

The August case focused on Google paying Apple and other companies to make its search engine the default on devices such as Apple’s iPhone. Google has said it didn’t maintain a monopoly through such agreements and that consumers could change their device defaults to use other search engines. 

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella testified in October that the idea that people shift from one search engine to another is «completely bogus» and added «defaults is the only thing that matters in changing search behavior.»

According to the Justice Department, the Google search engine is used for nearly 90% of web searches, but the company disputes that number, the Times reports.

The Sherman Antitrust Act, which dates to 1890, prohibits activities restricting interstate commerce and competition in the marketplace, essentially outlawing corporate monopolies. It’s the cornerstone of US antitrust legislation, leading to the federal government’s breakup of late 19th century Gilded Age industrial giants.

CNET’s Imad Khan contributed to this report.

When you’re looking for the best camera to carry in your pocket, you need to consider today’s top-tier phones. The imaging capabilities of the iPhone 16 Pro and Galaxy S25 Ultra are among the best money can buy. And with travel season ramping up, carrying a phone may be the most convenient camera. But for photo details how do these two mobile titans compare?

To find out, I shot hundreds of photos using both phones in a variety of conditions to see which phone takes the best-looking images. What’s «best» is often down to personal perspective so while I’ll be giving my personal take on each test as a professional photographer and giving my reasons why I prefer one over the other, you may well find that you prefer the other. So have a look through the range of examples here and see if you come to a different conclusion. 

Read more: Best Camera Phone of 2025

All images shown have been taken using each phone’s default camera mode using default settings, unless otherwise stated. While images from the Galaxy S25 have been uploaded as taken, the iPhone’s images have had to be converted through Adobe Lightroom as our publishing platform doesn’t support Apple’s default HEIF image format. This process doesn’t affect the image in any way. 

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Starting out with an easy outdoor scene. Both phones have done a great job capturing an even exposure here and both images are packed with detail. It’s difficult to choose between them, but the iPhone has the edge for me as it’s achieved a slightly warmer image with more natural-looking tones. The S25 Ultra’s image looks too saturated, especially in the blue sky, which I find quite distracting. 

It’s much the same story when we switch to the ultrawide lenses on both phones. I prefer the warmer tones in the iPhone’s shot, which makes the S25 Ultra’s look quite cold by comparison. I also prefer the lighter shadows on the iPhone’s image, making it an easy win for the iPhone here. Notably, both phones are doing a good job of compensating for the ultrawide lenses at the edges (a function turned on by default on both phones); the railing remains straight in each shot and not curving as you’d typically see using a lens this wide. 

There’s almost no difference between these two outdoor scenes. The blossom looks crisp on both images, with excellent overall exposure. The iPhone’s image is again slightly warmer in tone but it’s negligible.

The Galaxy S25 takes an easy win with this image of bluebells. The colors are much more vibrant, especially in the greens on the blades of grass, which look quite washed out on the iPhone’s image. It actually looks like the S25’s camera lens is slightly polarized to reduce reflections and increase saturation, but I don’t know if that’s the case. Either way, Samsung takes the win here.

At 5x zoom things get worse for the iPhone. Despite the bluebells being reasonably far away, the phone seemed unable to achieve a sharp focus on the flowers. The S25 Ultra, meanwhile, managed to achieve a sharp image with richer colors. 

I prefer the iPhone’s image here though. It’s brighter and the warmer colors on the bricks on the surrounding buildings look much more true to life. 

The iPhone’s image is again brighter here and I prefer its colors too. The Galaxy S25 Ultra does have the edge in fine detail, though. You really need to zoom in to see it but the tiny lines on the building are slightly sharper on the S25. 

The S25 Ultra does have a physical advantage over the iPhone with its 10x optical zoom lens, which allows it to zoom in even further while still maintaining a pin-sharp image. 

You can still digitally zoom in with the iPhone to 10x, and the results aren’t bad. I prefer the colors of the S25 Ultra’s shot here, but the difference in detail isn’t that noticeable.

Zooming in close to see the fine details, the S25 Ultra’s optical zoom image definitely has a bit more clarity but the digital upscaling on the iPhone’s shot has done a great job here, as the difference isn’t immense.

iPhone 16 Pro vs. Galaxy S25 Ultra: Night modes compared

At first glance, the only real difference between the iPhone’s 5x shot and the S25 Ultra’s 5x shot is the color balance. And honestly, I don’t have a preference between the warmer tone of the iPhone or the more magenta bias of the S25. 

However, when you zoom in close to the details, the iPhone has produced a sharper image here, with an odd sort of digital blurring around the lamp post in the S25 Ultra’s image. So sometimes the S25 Ultra’s zoom is sharper, other times it’s the iPhone’s. I’m glad they’re making this easy for me. 

Again, the only real difference here is in the color balance and I don’t really know which I prefer. The exposure, noise levels and amount of detail are practically identical. 

Things changed when I switched to the ultrawide lenses, though. The S25 Ultra’s shot is definitely brighter, capturing more detail in the cobblestones in the foreground and in the buildings in the distance. The iPhone’s image is much darker overall. 

Just to confuse things further, the iPhone’s nighttime image with its ultrawide lens is noticeably brighter than the S25 Ultra’s in this example that I shot in the Arctic. I actually had to double-check the image metadata to make sure I hadn’t mixed these up, but I haven’t. The iPhone’s image has captured more light information here and produced more detail on the ice door to the right. 

The iPhone’s nighttime image is again slightly brighter here but it’s also kept the bright highlights on the pub sign under control. On the S25 Ultra’s image, those highlights are almost lost to pure white but the lovely green and yellow tones have been retained in the iPhone’s image. The colors overall are noticeably warmer on the iPhone’s shot, however, which may not be to your taste. Here, I think they work well.

But in this example, the iPhone has produced a weirdly warm-looking image that I really don’t like. Those warm colors were not present at the time of capture and it doesn’t work for the scene, especially not with such strong orange tones in the sky. The S25 Ultra’s image is much more balanced overall and it’s a slightly sharper image too. It’s a very easy win for Samsung here.

Things don’t improve for the iPhone when using the ultra-wide lens. Its image is again plagued by overly warm tones, while the S25 Ultra’s shot is both more color-accurate and brighter. 

iPhone 16 Pro vs. Galaxy S25 Ultra: Which takes better selfies?

While the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s selfie is slightly brighter, I don’t like what it’s done with the colors. My face has been made a weird shade of orange and my denim jacket is a much deeper blue than it really is. The skin tones on the iPhone’s shot are much more accurate, and its shot is sharper as well.

Both phones have a wider-angle mode for the selfie camera, although the iPhone’s seems to be a lot wider. That’s definitely worth keeping in mind if you frequently like to cram lots of friends into your group pics. You could probably squeeze at least one or two extra friends in if you used the iPhone, or have to decide who you like least and leave them out of frame if you used the S25 Ultra. Otherwise, the image differences are the same as before. 

iPhone 16 Pro Vs Galaxy S25 Ultra: Which camera is better?

I’ve written many of these comparison pieces on various generations of phones in my 14 years at CNET and I don’t remember having done one that’s felt this close. The problem is that neither phone excels consistently in one area; the iPhone 16 Pro’s ultra-wide shots aren’t as bright as the S25 Ultra’s, except on those occasions when they actually are, confusingly. I’ve taken many more images not included here that both support some of my conclusions and argue against them. Go figure.

But there are some takeaways I can give with confidence. Generally speaking, the iPhone’s colors are more natural than the S25 Ultra’s, which can sometimes look overly saturated. This has been the case with almost every Samsung phone since the company started putting cameras in them and it’s still the case today. Those looking for a more natural base image to apply your own filters and effects over will be better suited with the iPhone 16 Pro.

But that’s less the case at night, when the iPhone more consistently delivers warmer tones that look less natural than the S25 Ultra’s. So, if night photography is important to you, the S25 Ultra may be the better option. Overall, its night mode images from all lenses were brighter and sharper.

Sure, the S25 Ultra has the extended zoom range but you’d really need to know you’ll make the most of a 10x zoom to justify picking one over the other. Personally, I find the 5x zoom level a perfect sweet spot and here the phones are pretty much on par. And on those rare occasions you may want to push things further, the iPhone’s digital zoom can still deliver sharp results. 

There are other things for photographers to consider too: Apple’s ProRaw is superb and while the company’s Photographic Styles can be good for adding a creative look to your images, Samsung’s new tool for mimicking the color grade from example photos you feed it works surprisingly well — I actually think I might get more use out of that overall. I haven’t even gone into video quality either, which is a whole other article, especially when you consider both phones shoot Log video, although only the iPhone uses ProRes. 

Deciding between the phones based solely on the cameras is nigh on impossible. Which one you should get will instead come down to the bigger question of iOS versus Android; which platform you’re already using and which one will work best with other pieces of tech in your life. But for simple picture quality, you may as well toss a coin.