Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) shares shrugged off another potential blow to Google’s dominance, even as the company braced for a fresh courtroom battle over its digital advertising empire.
A federal trial opening Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, will determine how to rein in what a judge has already ruled to be an illegal monopoly in Google’s ad technology.
The Justice Department wants Google to sell parts of its advertising tools, arguing that only a breakup can restore fair competition and innovation for publishers reliant on the system.
Google counters that such a move would disrupt consumers and the wider internet, insisting recent changes to its Ad Manager platform already address competition concerns.
The proceedings follow a separate case in which another judge declared Google’s search engine a monopoly but stopped short of forcing dramatic structural changes, such as selling off the Chrome browser.
That decision helped lift Alphabet’s stock 20% to a record $3 trillion valuation. In early deals the stock was flat at $254.33.