4 Implications of Google’s Landmark Antitrust Loss

Google’s defeat in a landmark U.S. search antitrust trial could significantly alter the search industry if its appeal fails—a process that may take years.

The antitrust ruling’s aim to diminish Google’s search market dominance would create opportunities for competitors like Microsoft’s Bing and benefit artificial intelligence companies including OpenAI.

The case will proceed to a remedy trial in the fall, where Judge Amit Mehta may bar Google from paying companies like Apple to be the default search engine on its products, according to three legal experts speaking with ADWEEK.

But Google is under scrutiny for its adtech stack in another (and, many say, much stronger) antitrust case next month.

Here are four key implications of the ruling for Google, its competitors and the upcoming adtech antitrust trial.

Bleeding into the adtech trial

Earlier this year, the Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of monopolizing the digital ads market through serial acquisitions and anticompetitive tactics over the past 15 years. The trial is set to begin Sept. 9.

And while some assume that the loss in search puts Google in a weaker position by already suggesting that it is a dominant player ahead of its next trial, “Bad behavior in one market does not necessarily mean provable bad behavior in another market,” said Alan Chapell, president of Chapell & Associates.

The findings in the search lawsuit were straightforward and represented a classic Sherman Antitrust violation, where Google paid Apple for search exclusivity. But in a broader ad market, Google could contend that competition includes major players like Amazon and Meta.

On the acquisition front, Google could argue that the DOJ and Federal Trade Commission approved its $400 million acquisition of Admeld, an ad optimization platform for publishers, in 2011, and its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in 2007.

“The court is going to look at the facts independently,” said Gary Kibel, a privacy and data security lawyer at Davis+Gilbert. “One way that it could directly bleed over is if it’s the same people and similar business practices of getting into exclusive deals.”

Ending Google-Apple payments paves the way for rivals

If Mehta blocks Google from paying to be the default engine, rivals like Microsoft and AI giants like OpenAI are poised to benefit.

Court documents and testimony show that Microsoft repeatedly persuaded Apple to make Bing its default search engine. The tech giant offered to transfer 100% of its search ad revenue from iPhones and iPads to Apple, or even to sell Bing. However, Apple executives ultimately favored the 36% revenue share from Google due to the strength and reliability of Google’s search ads business.

Google losing its grip as the default search engine could make Microsoft a favorable candidate for Apple and Samsung. As of January 2024, Bing holds a 7.87% share of the U.S. search market, according to StatCounter, while Google commands an 87.46% share.

“This ruling opens the door to various remedies that would allow advertisers to be more efficient with their search spend that begins outside of Google’s search engine,” said Adam Epstein, co-CEO and president of adMarketplace.

AI companies like OpenAI and Perplexity are challenging traditional search engines with their own AI-powered solutions. OpenAI recently introduced SearchGPT, available to select users. If Google is removed as the default search engine on phones and browsers, it could boost the adoption of these AI alternatives.

Puncturing Google’s AI advantage

Google’s loss of search dominance could undermine its hold on the AI market.

In his ruling, Mehta found that Google’s share of search queries in 2020 was nearly 95% on mobile devices and 84% on desktops. This data provides Google with valuable real-time search information to train its AI models.

“This is an extraordinary advantage for Google in training its large language model, further cementing its dominance in the AI world,” said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next. “By limiting abuse of Google’s dominance in search, it won’t be able to advantage itself in training its LLM for the next versions of discovery.”

Given the choice, people will likely favor Google

A similar antitrust case in the European Union resulted in a record $5 billion fine against Google for antitrust violations. In response, Google introduced a search ballot screen for Android users in the EU, prompting them to select a default search engine. Following this, Opera, an EU-based browser challenging the default status, saw a 164% increase in new EU users on iOS. But, as Platformer’s Casey Newton points out, this had a negligible effect on Google’s market share in Europe.

In any case, it’s unlikely that the U.S. will adopt a similar approach.

“The U.S. doesn’t tend to push for required choice mechanisms, and I’m not sure how effective it’s going to be here,” said Chapell. “Google is the Kleenex of this generation. The brand recognition alone is going to push most people toward Google’s search engine.”