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Google’s antitrust ruling left things pretty much the same: What that brave new world looks like

Over the course of Google’s antitrust case, the landscape started shifting on its own thanks to AI tools like ChatGPT.

9/3/25 9:08AM

For those hoping Google’s monopoly case would bring big change to Big Tech, yesterday’s ruling was a severe disappointment. As Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives titled his note following the decision: “Government Folds Like Cheap Suit.”

The remedies doled out by US District Court Judge Amit Mehta avoided the most drastic measures and kept Google intact. He did not force the search giant to divest its Chrome browser or Android operating system as the Department of Justice had asked.

While the judge banned exclusive distribution agreement deals, such as the $20 billion one it had with Apple to be the default search engine on iPhones, he allowed Google to continue paying for that pride of placement — as long as the agreements only last for one year at a time and Google doesn’t prohibit Apple or others from “simultaneously distributing any other GSE [general search engine], browser, or GenAI product.” In other words, Apple can continue accepting money from Google to make its search engine the default on iPhones with some minor changes.

The court did order Google to share some search and user data — though not ads data — with competitors. But, all in all, the decision leaves things pretty much as they were. Fortunately for advocates of change, over the course of the trial, which began in 2023, the Big Tech ecosystem has been shifting on its own.

Here’s what that brave not-so-new world looks like now:

Google

Google has already shortened the time periods and gotten rid of exclusivity from its existing agreements, so not much is changing there. Presumably Google will keep paying Apple and Samsung to be the default search engine on their phones, just with some minor tweaks to the details.

Google remains the default search engine in Chrome, the world’s most popular browser, ensuring plenty of traffic to Google’s advertising ecosystem. Google makes the vast majority of its revenue from advertising. Even if Google’s AI assistant, Gemini, is lagging in popularity to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, ChatGPT’s traffic still pales in comparison to what Google.com sees on any given day.

Google itself has been rolling out AI features across its product suite, including at the top of search results. Last month, Google’s head of search, Liz Reid, said that thanks to AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google users were “searching more than ever.” She also denied claims that AI features were killing traffic to other websites, something those other websites don’t agree with.

Apple

Presumably Apple will continue taking money from Google because why not? The roughly $20 billion it gets from Google per year accounts for a big chunk of its Services revenue, not to mention its profit.

Apple also now has other options and can in theory begin taking payments from others interested in putting their products on its coveted iPhones, though most of the alternatives’ pockets are not nearly as deep as Google’s.

As Apple’s Eddy Cue said during the trial, Apple is “actively looking at” adding AI-powered search to its Safari browser, with OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic in the running. “We will add them to the list — they probably won’t be the default,” he had said.

OpenAI

In a bout of supreme irony, the only real challenger to Google’s search monopoly, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, was part of the reason Google gets to hold on to its dominant position.

“The emergence of GenAI changed the course of this case,” the judge wrote, noting how quickly the landscape changed over the course of the trial. “No witness at the liability trial testified that GenAI products posed a near-term threat to GSEs. The very first witness at the remedies hearing, by contrast, placed GenAI front and center as a nascent competitive threat.”

What the case did do for OpenAI was pave the way for it to use some of Google’s search and user data to become a bigger threat to the search engine. As the judge put it, “Such sharing will deny Google the fruits of its exclusionary acts and promote competition.” (OpenAI has already been leaning on Google to boost its GenAI capabilities without its permission.)

“GenAI platforms could easily obtain Qualified Competitor status & reap the benefits of Google’s prior investments,” JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth wrote. “However, we remain positive on Google shares as Google has a clear competitive advantage in AI through its full stack approach.”

In other words, the ruling will give Google competitors a leg up, but Google still wears the crown.

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Just days after Google announced a monster $85 billion upsized equity raise, the extremely profitable Meta is seeking to sell “tens of billions of dollars” in stock, according to a new report from the Financial Times.

Meta is planning on spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on AI capital expenditure this year alone.

Shares dropped more than 5% on the news.

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FT: Anthropic staff helping the NSA use Mythos for offensive cyberattacks

Anthropic’s Mythos AI model was deemed too dangerous to release to the public, with the company citing its ability to orchestrate novel cyberattacks.

And that’s just what the National Security Agency is doing, with the help of Anthropic staff embedded at the agency, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Only a small number of companies and US allies have been given access to the advanced model, which means America’s adversaries have not had the chance to shore up their defenses against the AI model’s new offensive capabilities.

The arrangement is especially unusual as the Pentagon has deemed Anthropic’s AI a national security supply chain risk — effectively blacklisting it for defense work — in response to the company’s refusal to allow its technology to be used for any legal application, which could include autonomous killing or mass surveillance. Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the determination.

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Longtime Tesla bear JPMorgan upgraded Tesla and raised its price target to $475 from $145

For more than a decade, JPMorgan was Wall Street’s most stubborn Tesla skeptic, anchored by auto analyst Ryan Brinkman’s strict focus on traditional car fundamentals and near-term delivery numbers.

But JPM recently handed coverage of the stock to a new analyst, Rajat Gupta, who is throwing that playbook out the window. In a note Friday, the firm upgraded Tesla to “neutral” from “underweight” and raised its price target 228% to $475 from $145. (The analyst consensus on FactSet is $403.) Instead of focusing on the company’s struggling vehicle business, the new analyst is orienting himself more toward Tesla’s idea of the future, now modeling Tesla’s physical AI and robotaxi fleets all the way out to the year 2040.

Here are the main reasons for the capitulation:

Looking past the car lot: Gupta argues that Tesla “is at the forefront of physical AI, entering uncharted TAMs” and therefore “deserves the benefit of the doubt to be valued on LT earnings potential” rather than near-term speed bumps.
Unmatched vertical integration: Tesla’s control over everything from battery cells to custom silicon gives it a massive moat. JPM notes this starting point advantage is “unmatched at an industrial level scale” and “still somewhat under-appreciated and misunderstood.”
The AWS flywheel effect: Deploying Optimus robots inside its own factories “should not only lower COGS for the base automotive business, but more importantly, help validate the product at an industrial scale.” Gupta called it “a classic flywheel effect, somewhat analogous to AWS and Kiva at AMZN.”

For Tesla bulls who have argued for years that this is an AI company and not a carmaker, JPM’s sudden $3.9 trillion valuation model is the ultimate validation.

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