Google soars on court ruling that doesn’t force the search giant to sell Chrome

Google is soaring in premarket trading after a court ruling released after the close on Tuesday avoided some of the worst-case antitrust scenarios the company faced in relation to its dominant position in search.

A year ago, a federal judge ruled that Google broke antitrust laws to maintain its monopoly in search. Yesterday that same judge told Google how it must fix that illegal monopoly. US District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google could no longer engage in exclusive search deals like its one with Apple, but the search giant isn’t being broken up or forced to divest Chrome.

“Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment,” the decision read. “Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”

The decision is being applauded across Wall Street as a major win for the company, with Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives writing the “government folds like a cheap suit.” He hiked his price target on Alphabet to $245 from $225, believing that the court’s ruling will help unlock a higher valuation for the shares.

Google has $26 billion in deals with companies like Samsung and Apple — that one alone worth $20 billion a year — to be the default search engine on their products. However, Apple shares are also moving higher in postmarket trading, as the judge said nonexclusive payments to preload Google products, which help drive its lucrative Services segment revenues, can continue.

“Google will not be barred from making payments or offering other consideration to distribution partners for preloading or placement of Google Search, Chrome, or its GenAI products,” the judge wrote. “Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial — in some cases, crippling — downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban.”

The court also ordered Google to share some of its valuable search data with competitors.

One possible though unlikely recommendation from the Justice Department had been to force the company to sell its Chrome browser. Google Search is the default search engine in Chrome, the world’s most popular browser, ensuring plenty of traffic to Google’s advertising ecosystem. Recently both OpenAI and Perplexity expressed interest in buying Chrome.

Google still faces remedies for a separate monopoly case involving ad tech, with that phase of the case set to begin next month.