Google gets hit from both sides in antitrust war

The legal whack-a-mole continues

Alphabet spent the week getting punched in two different courtrooms, which is not exactly the kind of diversification investors love to see. In the U.S., a magistrate judge ruled Google can’t re-litigate whether it has monopoly power in general search, which gives Yelp a cleaner path in its own antitrust fight.

Yelp just got a shortcut

That matters because Yelp no longer has to spend time and money proving the obvious first step all over again. If the case reaches trial, jurors will be told Google already has search monopoly status, thanks to the DOJ win Judge Amit Mehta handed down in 2024.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, a court ordered Google to pay roughly $1.5 billion in damages to PriceRunner, the price-comparison business owned by Klarna, for favoring its own shopping service in search results. Add interest and the bill swells to $1.97 billion, which is the kind of number that makes even a trillion-dollar company blink.

Why investors should care

This isn’t just courtroom theater. The rulings reinforce the same uncomfortable theme: Google’s search dominance is still under a microscope on both sides of the Atlantic, and the legal costs can keep stacking up like parking tickets on a bad day.

• U.S. case: helps Yelp by making Google’s monopoly status a settled issue
• Europe: adds a massive damages award tied to shopping search
• Stock reaction: Alphabet still managed to close higher, because markets sometimes have the memory of a goldfish

Big picture: Google can keep appealing, but the antitrust cloud isn’t going anywhere fast.