Catenaa, Wednesday, September 03, 2025- Alphabet stock rose over 8% on Wednesday after a federal district court judge ruled that Google wouldn’t be forced to sell its Chrome browser after ruling divestment a “poor fit” in a landmark antitrust case.
The ruling from District of Columbia Judge Amit Mehta stated that the company will have to share data that helped it maintain its search monopoly, but saw Google avoid the harshest potential remedies.
As part of the decision, Mehta ruled that Google can continue to make payments to “distribution partners for preloading or placement of Google Search, Chrome, or GenAI products.”
This allows Google to continue making its $20 billion per year payments to Apple in exchange for the iPhone maker using Google Search as the default search engine in its Safari browser and Siri.
The Justice Department had pushed for a forced sale of the company’s search business and for the judge to order an end to multibillion-dollar contracts that have all but assured Google’s market dominance, moves the judge denied to make.
“Plaintiffs have not shown that their behavioral remedies will be ineffective without the immediate divestiture of Chrome,” Mehta said.
The court’s task, Mehta said, is to discern between conduct that maintains a monopoly through anticompetitive acts as distinct from conduct that fuels a monopoly’s growth as a consequence of a superior product.
For Google, the judge’s decision affects a huge profit engine. In 2024, Google’s search engine advertising business generated more than $198 billion in revenue, accounting for 56.6% of parent company Alphabet’s total revenue.
The figure handily exceeds Google’s search engine advertising revenue in 2023, which totaled $175 billion, despite its antitrust defeat and a shift in online searches to artificial intelligence-based chatbots.
As of June 2023, Google controlled 91% of the global search engine market across all computing platforms and 87% in the US, according to Statcounter. On mobile, Google’s market share was even higher at 95%.
