Today, Google's corporate parent, Alphabet, is worth $1.7 trillion US and employs 182,000 people, with most of the money coming from $224 billion in annual ad sales flowing through a network of digital services anchored by a search engine that fields billions of queries a day.
Google could be hobbled if the trial ends in concessions that undercut its power. One possibility is that the company could be forced to stop paying Apple and other companies to make Google the default search engine on smartphones and computers. In late April, a U.S. judge in Virginia denied Google's motion to dismiss a separate Justice Department antitrust case focused on advertising technology. The government alleges that Google monopolizes key digital advertising technologies, collectively referred to as the "ad tech stack," which publishers depend on to sell ads and advertisers rely on to reach potential customers.