[Lauren Feiner at The Verge]

"A federal judge ruled that Google violated US antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly in the search and advertising markets.

“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,” the court’s ruling, which you can read in full at the bottom of this story, reads. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.”"

This is seismic, both for Google and for the web. As The Verge points out, this is so far about liabilities, not about any prescriptive remedy. But as one of the major factors in the decision was the payments that Google makes to browser manufacturers, it seems likely that any remedy will change how this works. In turn, the impact across tech could be significant.

Apple received $20 billion from Google in 2022 to be the default search engine (it shares 36% of ad revenue from Safari users with the company). That's a big number, but nothing compared to its $394bn in total revenue. But for Mozilla, the impact might be more profound: in 2021, these payments represented 83% of its revenue. What happens to it without this underwriting?

It's too early to say exactly what will change, but this is also potentially a gift for the new batch of AI startups that are trying to seize search engine ground. The era of the internet flux that we've found ourselves in - wherein everything is once again up for grabs and seemingly-entrenched incumbents change dramatically at a moment's notice - shows no sign of slowing.

#Technology

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