Google—now called Alphabet—is indeed worth multiple trillions. Internet search is deeply baked into all our lives, as common as breathing—and Google has a 90 percent global share. Larry and Sergey, while still board members and shareholders with fortunes topping $100 billion each, are no longer employees. And this week US federal district court judge Amit P. Mehta issued a 286-page ruling, based on millions of documents, thousands of exhibits, and a nine-week trial, that Google violated antitrust law. “Google,” he wrote, “is a monopolist and has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” What’s more, the company whose founders hated ads now faces another trial to determine whether it is also a monopolist in digital advertising.
