Google’s punishment for an illegal monopoly is… having to share homework answers with the nerds in the back.

Going into trial, Google didn’t walk into that courtroom worried about a fine that would barely register against its $80 billion cash pile. What really kept Sundar Pichar awake at night was the idea of Uncle Sam taking a keg of dynamite to their internet empire. And it got pretty dicey there for a hot minute. The DOJ came in swinging with talk of forcing Chrome out of the family or even untangling Android from Google’s grip. 

To outsiders, that might sound like “just software,” but inside Google, those products are the oxygen tanks. Chrome funnels oceans of user data straight into its $237 billion ad machine, while Android is the delivery vehicle that guarantees Google Search shows up pre-installed on roughly 70% of smartphones worldwide (sorry Bing, you’re still riding shotgun in the clown car).

But today, we can finally put all the “what if Google loses Chrome” panic tweets to rest. After being found guilty of running an illegal monopoly in search last year, Judge Amit Mehta took one look at the DOJ’s breakup wishlist and basically said, “let’s all take a chill pill before we accidentally unplug half the internet.” Instead of carving Chrome out of the family or prying Android loose, the ruling landed closer to detention than expulsion. This means Google can’t keep roping partners into exclusive contracts, it has to open up some of its search index and click data to competitors, and rivals finally get a peek behind the curtain. But the real treasure (Google’s advertising data) stays locked away in the vault, untouched. To put it another way: Bing and DuckDuckGo finally get to copy a couple of notes, but Google is still holding the answer key.

(Source: New York Times)

In response, Alphabet shares jumped 6% on the news, because the only thing Wall Street cares about is that the breakup threat is officially off the table. Dan Ives at Wedbush wasted no time calling it a “monster win” and in the blink of an eye hiked his price target to $245. Apple got a nice little payday too, with its stock climbing on the reminder that Tim Cook still collects a $20 billion annual allowance from Google to keep Search the default on iPhones. It’s corporate welfare at its finest… getting paid billions for doing absolutely nothing.

Of course, Google isn’t totally off the hook. The company was still nailed for illegally holding a monopoly, and the DOJ made clear it doesn’t want Google pulling the same moves in AI with Gemini. Mehta (the judge) essentially said the remedies had to pry open search, but not go so far that they’d blow up the whole internet in the process. 

And yeah, this thing probably heads to the Supreme Court, which is the real final boss in all of this. But for now, Google the goliath walks away with the empire intact, the ad machine humming, and another battle chalked up in the win column.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Google and Apple as mentioned in the article.