Alphabet and Apple Jumps After Google Antitrust Ruling, Nvidia Falls

On this edition of Stock Movers:

- Shares of Google parent Alphabet (GOOG) jumped late Tuesday after a federal judge said Google doesn’t have to sell its popular Chrome web browser in the Justice Department’s landmark antitrust case against the search engine. The ruling allows Google to avoid one of the most severe remedy requests from the US government after the court found the company had an illegal monopoly in the search market. Judge Amit Mehta did bar Google from entering into exclusive contracts for internet search. The finding follows Mehta’s ruling last year that Google illegally monopolized the markets for online search and search advertisements. Mehta held a three-week hearing in April to determine a fix. The order is one of the most monumental court decisions affecting the tech sector in more than a quarter century, and could offer a blueprint for other judges who may end up weighing similar choices in cases against Meta Platforms Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Apple Inc. In another win for Google, the judge didn’t bar the company from making payments to third parties for default browser placement.

- Apple (AAPL) shares also gained in late trading as a result of the federal judges ruling that Google isn’t required to sell its Chrome web browser. Though Judge Amit Mehta ruled in an antitrust case that Google can’t enter exclusive contracts for internet search, deals that make the search provider a default option in internet browsers are still allowed. “Google is permitted to pay browser developers, like Apple,” he said in the decision. However, the partner company must promote other search engines, offer a different option in various operating systems or in privacy mode, and are allowed to make changes to the default search settings annually, Mehta wrote. “Cutting off payments from Google almost certainly will impose substantial — in some cases, crippling — downstream harms to distribution partners, related markets, and consumers, which counsels against a broad payment ban,” he said. Apple currently favors the Google search engine by giving it the best placement in Safari search bar on computer and mobile devices. Users can opt to switch to Microsoft Corp.’s Bing, DuckDuckGo and other options. Apple also changed its iOS software two years ago to allow the use of a different search engine in private mode.

- Nvidia (NVDA) closed below a key technical level for the first time since May as investors continue to rotate out of the leading maker of artificial intelligence chips. The stock fell 2% to $170.74 on Tuesday, a fourth straight negative session that took it below its 50-day moving average of $171.06. Breaking under this closely watched level is seen as a negative sign of near-term momentum trends.

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