On August 5, a US district court judge ruled in favor of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) in an antitrust case against Alphabet’s Google (GOOG, GOOGL), ruling “the court thus concludes that Google has monopolized the market for general search text advertising.”
A report from Bloomberg claims that DOJ officials will proceed with further action against Google and seek to break up the tech giant.
Jefferies senior analyst Brent Thill joins Morning Brief to give insight into the potential case against Google, what it means for the company and investors, and the broader market at large.
Thill begins by affirming: “Ultimately, we don’t believe a full breakup would happen. Even if it did, it would be good for shareholders because the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.”
Thill argues a split wouldn’t necessarily matter as competition in the advertising space is heating up against Google: “Meta (META) is just having incredible engagement, incredible AI progress. And we think that they’re having a big impact. All the advertisers we speak with are spending more on Meta than they are with Google… Secondarily to your point in search, in the last six months, I’ve used Perplexity more than I’ve used Google search.
“Third, if you think about the way we engage when you turn your TV on… Amazon (AMZN) is pushing with Prime, they’re pushing more videos. They’re going after advertiser budgets that Google is going after,” Thill tells Yahoo Finance.
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This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino