A U.S. federal judge has ruled that Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet, holds an illegal monopoly in certain online advertising technology markets. This decision deals a significant blow to one of Google's key business areas. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema found that Google violated antitrust laws in the markets of ad exchange platforms and ad servers, which are tools used by websites to sell ad space. However, the judge noted that Google does not meet the definition of a monopoly in the market for tools used by advertisers to purchase display ads.
Following this ruling, Alphabet's stock (GOOGL, Financial) saw a sharp decline, dropping as much as 3.2%, while shares of Trade Desk surged nearly 8%. This case marks another major setback for Google, which has previously been found to monopolize the online search market in a separate legal case.
