Google’s Ad Stack Remains Intact After Ruling, but Could Face Stiffer Competition, Experts Say

Google dodged a pair of antitrust bullets on either side of the Atlantic this week but could still come under increased competitive fire, analysts said.

The penalty imposed on the company by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, one year after finding that Google operates an illegal monopoly in online advertising, was far more modest than the Justice Department had sought and competitors had hoped for. It does not require Google’s parent Alphabet to divest any assets, or share its vast data horde with competitors, and it allows Google to continue to pay Apple and others for placement of its search engine and Chrome browser on their devices. Instead, it merely bars Google from paying for exclusivity on devices and requires it to share only a limited amount of search data.

In Europe, where Google was facing a fine over its online advertising monopoly that was already expected to be more modest than previous antitrust penalties levelled by the European Commission, EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič made an unusual 11th-hour intervention to block even that from being imposed.

According to Politico, the halt was called to prevent further antagonizing U.S. President Donald Trump, who last week vowed to impose “substantial additional tariffs” on countries that have digital rules he deems as discriminatory against U.S. companies, threatening the fragile truce reached last month in the U.S.-EU framework trade agreement. The U.S. had pressed for changes to the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act as part of those negotiations, but the EU refused and the changes were not incorporated.

According to DBD Investment Bank Managing Director Philip Alberstat, however, Mehta’s  ruling still has the potential to bring about major changes to the competitive landscape. “Google has been paying platforms like Apple and others massive sums of money for exclusivity that has essentially created insurmountable barriers to entry,” he said. “This ruling changes all that in theory, by changing the competitive landscape.”

Alberstat also saw the requirement that Google share some search data as creating new business opportunities for startups and potential competitors. “In my opinion, one of the main goals with the ruling is to help innovation in business,” he said. “The requirement for Google to share search data creates entirely new business opportunities. Companies can now build analytics, insights and other tools around data that were previously locked inside Google.”

Companies that rely on Google to reach customers and market their products, however, may see little immediate change, according to Roman Eloshvili, founder and CEO of XData Group. “For businesses, the immediate takeaway is that Google remains a dominant force,” he said. “It’s not going anywhere, and with Chrome and Android still under its control, the core ecosystem remains intact.”

What has changed, he added, is the distribution game. “With the ban on exclusive contracts in place, it means that alternative providers could get a better shot at visibility without being crushed by Google’s dominance,” he said. “That’s good news for companies looking to diversify how they reach customers online — they now have more freedom to strike deals with rival search engines.”

The biggest question raised by Judge Mehta’s ruling is how it will affect the evolution of the artificial intelligence (AI) search business. “The emergence of gen AI changed the course of this case,” Mehta wrote in his ruling. He noted the emergence of AI-powered search is already reshaping the competitive landscape and that imposing onerous remedies could “jolt the system” under the circumstances when market forces are “already doing the work.”

The SEO Works CEO Ben Foster warned, however, that allowing Google to continue to pay for placement on third-party devices could leave it in a position to dominate the AI search game.

“It can still be the search engine of choice for Android phones and also continue to pay Apple to be the default search engine there,” he noted. “This means as search evolves with AI technology, Google’s AI solutions will have the best chance of adoption. AI challengers such as Perplexity and OpenAI may benefit from greater access to data, but they still face the uphill task of gaining scale and adoption among users.”