David McCabe in the NY Times reported a 67-page official Google filing claiming
it does not control enough of the industry …
It has not built its system to give its own services an advantage …
They denied that the company’s software gave it an inappropriate advantage…
Until Google presented these facts, investors (and just about everyone else) assumed that in fact Google did have strong market power. It was fined almost US$2 billion by the EU and the US Justice Department is likely to file an antitrust suit shortly, So are the state Attorney-Generals and possibly the UK.
The $1.067 trillion dollar market cap represented a 32:1 price to earnings ratio. As investors discovered they were mistaken about Google market power, the stock fell over $200 billion, although the P/E ratio remained above the 22:1 average of the Dow.
(The stock price effect here is pure satire. Everyone knows Google lawyers were doing what American lawyers usually do, make claims on behalf of the client that are not true. Jennie laughed out loud when I told here what Google claimed.)