TNB Tech Minute: Google Loses Antitrust Case Over Its Search Dominance

[00:00:00] Here's your TNB Tech Minute for Monday, August 5. I'm Zoe Thomas for the Wall Street Journal. A federal judge has ruled that Google engaged in illegal practices to preserve its search engine monopoly. Google performs about 90 percent of the world's internet searches.

[00:00:19] The government argued Google suppressed competition by paying billions of dollars to operators of web browsers and phone manufacturers to make Google their default search engine. The long-awaited ruling is a major antitrust victory for the Justice Department.

[00:00:34] Kent Walker, president of global affairs at Google parent Alphabet, said the company planned to appeal the ruling. Elon Musk has revived his lawsuit against open AI in federal court. The billionaire alleges he was manipulated into believing that open AI, which Musk helped launch, would be a nonprofit.

[00:00:53] Musk has asked the court to cancel open AI's licensing agreement with Microsoft because it breaches the deal Musk made with open AI and its co-founder Sam Oltman. Open AI has denied that there was a founding agreement governing the company and said that the lawsuit rested on questionable facts.

[00:01:10] News Corp. owner of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires has a content licensing partnership with open AI. And today's market sell-off hit the tech stocks that make up the Magnificent 7 hard. The Magnificent 7 includes Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla.

[00:01:29] Collectively they lost $653 billion in market cap today. It's the largest one-day decline since July. Despite today's losses, all the Magnificent 7 stocks except for Tesla remain up year to date. For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out Tuesday's tech news briefing podcast.