Google’s court week was ugly — stock barely blinked

Court week from hell

Alphabet spent the week getting reminded that being the internet’s biggest kid on the block comes with a never-ending line of people trying to push you back down. A U.S. magistrate judge said Google can’t re-argue whether it has monopoly power in general search, which is a pretty big win for Yelp in its antitrust case. Translation: if that case goes to trial, jurors may be told Google already has search monopoly status, no extra courtroom gymnastics required.

Europe and Korea piled on

Then came the money shots. A Swedish court ordered Google to pay about $1.97 billion to PriceRunner, the price-comparison service owned by Klarna, over allegations that Google favored its own shopping tools in search results. Not exactly the kind of shopping-cart checkout you want.

And just to keep the week spicy, South Korea’s antitrust regulator accused Google of abusing its dominance in the Android app marketplace, while the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld a €4.1 billion fine tied to anti-competitive Android practices. That’s a lot of legal whack-a-mole.

So why didn’t GOOG fall apart?

Oddly enough, the stock was still up about 4% for the week, even after the courtroom pile-on. Markets do that sometimes: they shrug at the scary headline if they think the fines are survivable or already priced in.

But don’t get too comfy. The bigger takeaway is that regulators keep pressing on the same pressure points — search, shopping, and Android — which means Alphabet’s business model is still under a microscope. Big picture: the ad giant isn’t in existential danger, but the bill for being the internet’s gatekeeper keeps getting longer.