Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies before the House Judiciary Committee at the Rayburn House Office Building on December 11, 2018 in Washington, DC.
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A federal judge narrowed the case that states and the Department of Justice can make in the antitrust trial against Google beginning in September, according to a newly-released decision.
It’s a significant win for Google, though it will still need to face other claims brought by the enforcers when the trial begins September 12.
D.C. District Court Judge Amit Mehta granted, in part, Google’s motion for summary judgment in the cases brought by the Department of Justice and a coalition of state attorneys general. The cases both alleged that Google illegally maintained a monopoly by cutting off rivals from search distribution channels.
While the judge mostly allowed that shared argument from the enforcers to move forward, he notably threw out the states’ claim that Google unfairly hurt search rivals like Yelp and Tripadvisor through the design of search results pages that lowered their visibility.
Mehta also narrowed the DOJ’s case to remove arguments over certain agreements Google made for its Android mobile operating system, Google Assistant and internet of things devices. He also removed arguments pertaining to how Google managed its Android Open Source Project. After Google filed the motion on summary judgement against those portions of the suit, the DOJ chose not to offer an opposition on those particular points, the filing notes.
Mehta denied Google’s motion for summary judgement on both enforcers’ claims that Google used exclusive dealing arrangements to violate anti-monopoly law, writing, “There remain genuine disputes of material fact that warrant a trial.”
As for the states’ claims about Google’s alleged anticompetitive behavior around its search ad tool SA360, Mehta wrote that there also remains a “genuine dispute of material fact with regard to the anticompetitive effect of Google’s disparate development of SA360’s ad-buying features,” meaning that claim is allowed to move forward.
The DOJ and a bipartisan group of AGs from 38 states and territories, led by Colorado and Nebraska, filed similar but separate antitrust suits against Google in 2020. Though they are separate complaints, they were combined for pretrial purposes, such as discovery of evidence.
The DOJ’s complaint focused on the ways Google allegedly used exclusionary contracts to tie up important channels to distribute search engines. In doing so, the agency alleged, Google maintained its monopoly power by denying rivals the chance to reach a similar scale and challenge its dominance.
The coalition of states made similar arguments but added additional points that aimed to address core arguments that Google’s longtime opponents have made against the tech giant.
In addition to the allegedly exclusionary contracts for search distribution, the states alleged that Google also violated antitrust law through its product to buy search ads and the way it designed its search results pages.
The states will still be allowed to bring claims that Google used its search ad product to disadvantage advertisers by not allowing them interoperate between its own tools and competitors’ to buy general search ads. But they will no longer be able to bring the claim that Google harmed competition by designing its search results to push down search engine competitors’ results, the judge decided.
That part of the complaint was most similar to the focus of a Federal Trade Commission investigation that closed a decade ago. The FTC decided to close the investigation without charges after probing whether the company gave its own content on its search results page an unfair advantage at rivals’ expense. But The Wall Street Journal later revealed that FTC staff had recommended filing suit against Google in connection to the search bias allegations, concluding that “conduct has resulted—and will result—in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets.”
The judge’s decision to throw out the states’ claims of search result bias is a blow to companies like Yelp, which have fought for more than a decade to have regulators around the world challenge the webpage design of Google’s search results.
“We appreciate the Court’s careful consideration and decision to dismiss claims regarding the design of Google Search,” Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, said in a statement. “Our engineers build Search to provide the best results and help you quickly find what you’re looking for. People have more ways than ever to access information, and they choose to use Google because it’s helpful. We look forward to showing at trial that promoting and distributing our services is both legal and pro-competitive.”
“I am pleased that the multistate attorneys general lawsuit challenging Google’s monopoly in the search engine market and search advertising will proceed to trial in September,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement. “We will continue to evaluate how to best press forward and establish Google’s pattern of illegal conduct that harms consumers and competition.”
The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
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LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.
The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.
“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.
He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.
Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.
“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”
Undecided on location
Founded in 2022 by Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup that competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
The company divides its business into three main camps: consumer-facing voice assistants, integrations with corporates such as Cisco, and tailor-made applications for specific industries like health care.
Staniszewski said the firm hasn’t yet decided where it could list, but that this decision will largely rest on where most of its users are located at the time.
“If the U.K. is able to start accelerating,” ElevenLabs will consider London as a listing destination, Staniszewski said.
The city has faced criticisms from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that its stock market is unfavorable toward high-growth tech firms.
Meanwhile, British money transfer firm Wiselast month said it plans to move its primary listing location to the U.S.,
Fundraising plans
ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.
Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.
Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.
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The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday.
“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement.
The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China.
The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.
The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.
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Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.
S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.
Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.
Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.
While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.
Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.
New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.