A landmark ruling in the anti-trust suit against Alphabet’s ([GOOGL]) monopoly on search came down favorably for the mega-cap stalwart on September 2nd.

A landmark ruling in the anti-trust suit against Alphabet’s (GOOGL/GOOG)) monopoly on search came down  favorably for the mega-cap stalwart on September 2nd. The ruling allows GOOGL to keep its Chrome browser which was the subject of the antitrust case that could have potentially led to Google being forced to sell off its search engine. One of the key reasons for the favorable ruling was emerging competition in search from generative AI companies like OpenAI and Perplexity, amongst others. It wasn’t a complete win for Alphabet as it is barred from exclusive search contracts and must share search index data with competitors. However, Google can still make payments to third parties for default browser placement. Overall, it was a great ruling for Google as the stock reacted strongly, gaining more than 8% during Wednesday’s trading session. The judge did speculate that the case could continue further into the hands of the Supreme Court, but the siting of emerging competition from other firms is a positive sign for Google if that does happen. The ruling was also view favorable for Apple (AAPL) which gained as much as 3% (IDB).

From a technical standpoint, the market looks like it may have anticipated the favorable ruling as GOOGL already traded on two consecutive buy signals and made a new all-time high in August. With the strong move Wednesday, GOOGL extended further to notch another all-time high albeit the stock now trades above the top of its ten-week trading band in heavily overbought territory. Out of the two, GOOGL holds a stronger technical backdrop than AAPL with a strong buy rating while AAPL is still rated as a hold. AAPL trades on three consecutive buy signals but has strong resistance overhead near previous all-time highs. In general, the favorable ruling in the antitrust suit against Alphabet has led to positive action for both GOOGL and AAPL which are two of the largest stocks in the S&P 500 and bodes well for the large-cap benchmark.