From Yahoo Finance, August 5:
The bedrock of Google’s (GOOG, GOOGL) empire sustained a major blow on Monday after a judge found its search and ad businesses violated antitrust laws.
The ruling, made by the District of Columbia's Judge Amit Mehta, sided with the US Justice Department and a group of states in a set of cases alleging the tech giant abused its dominance in online search.
"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. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act," Mehta wrote in his ruling.
Although Google is expected to appeal the decision, the findings, if upheld, could outlaw contracts that for years all but assured Google's search advertising dominance.
In 2023, Google's search advertising business generated more than $175 billion in revenue.
Coupled with Google's YouTube ads and Google network revenue, both of which it promotes on its general search engine, advertising accounted for a staggering $237 billion of the company's $307 billion in total revenue.
As of June 2023, Google controlled 91% of the global search engine market across all computing platforms, according to Statcounter. On mobile, Google's market share was even higher at 95%.
Nearly four years ago, in October 2020, when the DOJ and states filed suit, Google's annual revenue was $162 billion, roughly half of its most recently reported revenue for the year.
The decision is a huge win for the Justice Department and could have giant implications for some of the other big names in the tech world.
That's because Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Meta (META) are defending themselves against a series of other federal- and state-led antitrust suits, some of which make similar claims....
....MUCH MORE
Here's the ruling hosted on the NYTs servers (286 page PDF)
The stock was down $7.76 (4.61%) to $160.64 during the regular session and is coming back a bit after-hours, $161.44 last.
