A federal judge ruled on Thursday Google violated antitrust laws to hold a monopoly over online advertising technology, a major loss for the company in its latest antitrust case as Google may soon be forced to sell its Chrome browser and other assets.

Google has been branded an abusive monopolist by a federal judge for the second time in less than a year, this time for illegally exploiting some of its online marketing technology to boost the profits fueling an internet empire currently worth $1.8 trillion.

The ruling issued Thursday by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia comes on the heels of a separate decision in August that concluded Google’s namesake search engine has been illegally leveraging its dominance to stifle competition and innovation.

Google operates illegal monopolies over two separate markets related to digital advertising technology, a federal judge ruled on Thursday – dealing the Big Tech giant another historic antitrust loss that could result in a breakup of its online empire.

The bombshell ruling by US Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia determined that Google violated the Sherman Act by dominating the online publisher ad server market and the ad-exchange market that connects ad buyers to sellers.

Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), Google illegally dominated two markets for online advertising technology, a judge ruled on Thursday, dealing another blow to the tech giant and paving the way for U.S. antitrust prosecutors to seek a breakup of its advertising products.

Things are about to get uncomfortable in Washington for Google.

Top Republicans in Congress are leaning hard on the tech giant to make its content policies friendlier to the GOP, after winning that fight with social media companies Meta and X.

Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz of Texas and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio are now putting pressure on Google and its parent company Alphabet, which owns both the internet’s dominant search engine and the popular YouTube video platform.

Just as 2025 was off to a slow start for M&A, Google announced its largest-ever acquisition.

Google's parent company, Alphabet, and Wiz confirmed Tuesday that they had reached an agreement on the $32 billion all-cash deal.

The FBI is warning the more than 1.8 billion people who use Google's Gmail about a dangerous ransomware scheme that could hold your private data hostage.

This week, Google became the latest tech giant to do away with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In an email on Wednesday, Google informed employees that its diversity hiring targets would be done away with. This came after President Donald Trump signed an executive order demanding government contractors scrap these “woke” initiatives (via the Associated Press): Google’s parent company, Alphabet, also signaled the shift in its annual 10-K report it filed this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In it, Google removed a line included in previous annual...

Google is eliminating its minority hiring goals that were created following the death of George Floyd in 2020 and will review its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the tech company announced on Wednesday, to comply with President Donald Trump’s crackdown on DEI in the public and private sectors.

Google is rethinking its goal of hiring from underrepresented groups and other aspects of its D.E.I. programs. The Silicon Valley giant also said it was reviewing other diversity programs and initiatives and would update them if they seemed risky or ineffective. Get it sent to your inbox. Get our best tech reporting from the week. Get it sent to your inbox. Sign up for the On Tech newsletter. Get our best tech reporting from the week. Get it sent to your inbox. Google tried for years to diversify its work...