Wall Street Unperturbed by Google Ruling

Antitrust regulators don’t scare big tech investors. Stock of Google’s parent Alphabet fell by only a couple of percentage points after a judge found Google had broken antitrust laws in its efforts to protect its monopoly in search. Shares of Apple, which arguably stands to lose as much from the ruling as Google, fell even less. (Both stocks fell nearly 5% during the day’s regular trading, amid a broad market slump, but they were both down a lot before the ruling.)

The judge, Amit Mehta, found that Google is a monopolist in internet search and has maintained that position with its exclusive deals with Apple and other companies to be the default search engine on both iPhones and Android devices. There was some good news for Google in the ruling: The judge found the company didn’t have a monopoly in search advertising, thanks to the presence in the ad market of rivals like Amazon.