AsianFin -- Alphabet stock surged 9% on Wednesday after a U.S. judge declined to order Google to divest its Chrome browser, sparing the company from the harshest potential remedy in a landmark antitrust case.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who last year found Google to be a monopolist in online search, issued a closely watched ruling on Tuesday that stopped short of breaking up the business but imposed other restrictions aimed at curbing its dominance.
“This is overall a win for Google,” said Yory Wurmser, principal analyst at eMarketer. “It’s probably about the best it could have expected, given that they were found guilty.”
The judge wrote that forcing a Chrome spinoff would be a “poor fit for this case” and “incredibly messy and highly risky,” given that the browser is tightly integrated with Google’s other businesses.
While investors cheered the decision, advocacy groups and rival tech firms voiced disappointment, saying the ruling did not go far enough to rein in Google’s market power.
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