In essence, it could charge whatever it wanted—and Google would regularly tweak prices to identify the maximum it could charge. This, the ruling noted, proved highly successful for Google, with ad revenues growing consistently at a 20% rate year over year.

The absence of competition also allowed Google to change its products in a way that would limit the information that advertisers had on low-volume queries, while also restricting the availability of SEM tools to one that favored Google over rival search engines.

Google got away with this because, at the risk of repeating myself, it could. It was the biggest—if not the only—real player in the search engine game.

What happens if its market share slips below 80%? Or 70%? Or, perhaps, even lower? It will, for the first time, be forced into competing with rivals on price and functionality. As the market transforms from a monopoly to a duopoly, or perhaps even something with real diversity of choice, Google will be forced to compete on things like price and functionality.

In my most optimistic view, I think we’ll likely see a reduction in the overall cost for text ads, and for those ads served on third-party websites that make use of data captured by Google from its billions of users. Separately, as other search providers grow, their third-party offerings will look a lot more attractive thanks to the data obtained from their growing user bases.

When it comes to search text results, I imagine that the book of spending will go to whichever search engine has the most volume. For the foreseeable future, this means Google. Even if its market share dips below 60%—which, as I write this, almost feels unthinkable—it will still be the biggest player by far.

But I imagine advertisers will adjust their spending to an extent and prioritize those platforms that offer the best data on query volume and the best prices. Spending will be prioritized by a number of factors—pricing, volume, and the functionality offered.

If this sounds obvious, it’s because I am describing a functional market. We encounter them every time we go to a supermarket and walk down the cereal aisle, or when we buy a new car. The reason it sounds so alien in this context is because digital advertising, for the longest time, hasn’t been a normal market. It will take some time before we get there, but when we do, advertisers will be all the happier for it.