By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) - Google agreed to spend $500 million over 10 years to overhaul its compliance structure to resolve shareholder lawsuits accusing search engine companies of antitrust violations.

The preliminary settlement of the so-called derivative lawsuit on Alphabet, Google parents, including CEO Sundar Pichai, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was filed late Friday.

It requires approval from U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco.

Changes include the establishment of an independent board committee to monitor risk and compliance, which was previously the responsibility of the Board of Alphabet Board of Audit and Compliance Committee.

Alphabet will also set up a senior vice president-level committee to address regulatory and compliance issues, report to Pichai, and a compliance committee composed of Google product team managers and internal compliance experts.

Google denies wrongdoing to agree to the solution.

“Over the years, we have invested a lot of resources to build a strong compliance process,” California-based Mountain View said on Monday. “We are pleased to make these commitments to avoid prolonged litigation.”

Shareholders led by two Michigan pension funds accused Google executives and directors of breach of their trust duties by exposing the company to antitrust responsibilities related to search, AD Tech, Android and App Distribution businesses.

"These reforms are rarely implemented in shareholder derivative actions, forming a comprehensive overhaul of the letter compliance function, which leads to "deeply rooted cultural change."

These changes must be maintained for at least four years. Shareholders will not pay.

In an interview Monday, shareholders' attorney Patrick Coughlin said the settlement was the company's largest person to fund the regulatory compliance committee.

“We haven’t seen the board get rich reports on antitrust risks,” he said. “There are some things that can be done and should be done earlier.”

The settlement revealed the same day in Washington, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who discovered last August that Google violated federal antitrust laws to maintain the advantage in the search, completed a hearing to consider how to resolve the monopoly.

Mehta plans to rule by August. The U.S. Department of Justice has requested Google to sell its Chrome browser and share search data with its competitors.