In a major blow to Google, a federal judge on Monday ruled that the tech giant violated antitrust laws by illegally maintaining a monopoly on web searches.

The much-anticipated decision marks a significant victory for federal regulators trying to rein in the power of Big Tech and could send shock waves through the tech world. Other firms, including Apple, Meta and Amazon, also face federal antitrust lawsuits.

“After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in his opinion.

The ruling did not include a remedy for Google’s conduct.

Kent Walker, president of Google Global Affairs, said in a statement that the company plans to appeal.

“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available,” he said. “As this process continues, we will remain focused on making products that people find helpful and easy to use.”

Regulators alleged that Google maintained a monopoly on web searches by reaching agreements with browser developers, phone manufacturers and wireless carriers to pre-load their products with the Google search engine as the default.

By agreeing to partner with Google, the companies receive a portion of the advertising revenue Google generates through the search process, the ruling said.

In 2021, Google paid out a total of $26.3 billion in revenue share under its contracts with browser developers Apple and Mozilla, major manufacturers of Android devices such as Samsung and Motorola, and U.S. wireless carriers including AT&T and Verizon, according to the ruling.

That amount was Google’s greatest expense that year, the ruling said. That same year, Google earned more than $146 billion in advertising revenue, according to the ruling.

“These distribution deals have forced Google’s rivals to find other ways to reach users,” the ruling said.

The Mountain View-based subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. has increasingly cornered the market for web searching. In 2009, 80% of U.S. web searches went through Google. By 2020, that figure was nearly 90%, according to the ruling. Almost 95% of mobile searches used Google.

Google’s next closest competitor — Microsoft’s Bing — took up just 6% of web searches, the ruling said.

This dominance of the search market caught the attention of antitrust regulators, and by 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice and multiple state attorneys general had filed two separate lawsuits against the tech giant.

During the course of legal proceedings, dozens of witnesses were deposed, including high-ranking tech executives. The bench trial started in September 2023 and lasted for nine weeks. Closing arguments occurred in May.

It’s not yet clear what the ruling will mean for Google, particularly since the company plans to appeal and there will be further proceedings about potential remedies.

“We’re still in the middle of the game, as opposed to the end of the game,” said Colin Kass, a partner in the litigation department at Proskauer and co-head of the firm’s antitrust group.

But if the ruling stands, it could force Google to revisit how it does deals with outside companies for the opportunity to be the default search engine, said Jef Pearlman, clinical professor of law and director of the intellectual property and technology law clinic at the USC Gould School of Law.

“If it stands, this will limit their current approach,” he said.

The ruling is less likely to have an effect on the other pending tech federal antitrust cases, mostly because the Google case focuses so narrowly on the market for web searches, which is not relevant to the other lawsuits, legal experts said.

But it could serve as a warning for artificial intelligence companies, which are starting to make deals with outside companies to use their technology and could run into similar issues as Google did with its default search engine agreements.

Though the AI market is still nascent, “they will be thinking of this as they pen those deals,” Pearlman said.

It’s nail-biting time on Wall Street.

Stocks had been dropping at worrisome rates for several days, but on Monday things went from concerning to panicky. At one point, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 1,200 points, on a day when equity markets tumbled across the globe. It closed down 1,034 points, or 2.6%.

Technology stocks have been hit particularly hard lately: The Nasdaq composite was, for a moment on Monday, down more than 10% since the middle of last week, entering into what economists euphemistically call “correction” territory.

The sudden pullback has jolted investors and raised questions that go beyond financial markets to questions about the underlying health of the economy.

And even when things level out, the window-rattling downturn threatened to kill the political euphoria that has swept over Democrats since President Biden withdrew and Vice President Kamala Harris emerged as the party’s standard-bearer.

So what’s happened and what may be next? Here are first-draft-of-history answers to some of the crucial questions:

What’s causing the current plunge in U.S. stock markets?

Economists point to several factors behind the sell-off. To begin with, tech stocks were overdone, pushed beyond their underlying value by the artificial intelligence craze. Hence the Nasdaq correction. Nvidia, Apple and Intel were among big losers Monday.

And Friday’s jobs report, which showed a sharp slowdown in hiring and unemployment in July, set investors — even those not deep into tech — on edge. That came on the heels of news that jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, increased significantly in the waning days of July.

It hasn’t helped that the Federal Reserve has been reluctant to start cutting interest rates, which have throttled inflation as intended, but also weighed down businesses and consumers.

Then there’s the reverberation from global markets. On Monday, Japan’s once-high-flying stocks took their worst drubbing since Black Monday in 1987. The huge losses were seen, in part, as being a reaction to market declines and growing concerns in the U.S.

“It’s an unfortunate sequence of events that causes selling, selling, selling,” said Christopher Rupkey, chief economist at Fwdbonds, a research house in New York.

How have stock markets in the U.S. performed overall this year?

Even with Monday’s panic-selling, stocks generally are up for the year, many way up.

Both the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq are still more than 9% higher compared with the start of the year. The Dow is the laggard, up only 2.6% since Jan. 2.

Stocks have benefited from strong corporate earnings; investor excitement over AI’s growth and potential; and the expectation of Fed interest rate cuts, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

“This is still, at this point, a garden-variety correction,” Zandi said of the current turmoil, though he added that the situation warrants careful watching. “Things can take on a life of their own.”

Should I be worried about a recession?

Not yet, maybe never.

The classical definition of a recession is two straight quarters of declining gross domestic product. The latest, second-quarter GDP, after adjusting for inflation, was a strong 2.8%.

Almost every economist agrees that you can’t have a recession without job growth turning negative for some extended period. And the U.S. economy hasn’t come close to that point.

Employers have added jobs every month since January 2021, when the economy began to recover from the pandemic. Most recently, in July, job growth came in below expectations, but at 114,000 new payroll hires, that was still solidly positive.

“I don’t see the underpinnings of an economic downturn,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer and founding partner at Cresset Capital.

Can anything be done to arrest the decline in stocks?

To quell the sell-off, some investors have urged the Fed to cut interest rates now, in a kind of emergency move ahead of the central bank’s next scheduled meeting in mid-September.

Fed officials have taken such steps before, during the pandemic and the Great Recession, for example. But analysts doubt that the policymakers will intervene unless markets keep faltering badly; making an emergency cut could make things worse by frightening people and causing a market meltdown.

“It’s certainly not a hair-on-fire moment,” Zandi said.

What are the risks going forward?

With more people on edge about the economy, further declines in the stock market could erode confidence among businesses and consumers, leading to a pullback in hiring and spending. That would be a psychological development, but economies are not immune to the fears or the hopes of their human components.

Consumer spending, which drives the U.S. economy, has held up very well in recent years, thanks to steady job and wage growth. But there are indications from companies such as McDonald’s and Starbucks that consumers are becoming more cautious.

Higher-income households account for a disproportionately big share of spending, which has been supported by rising gains in home and stock prices. A sharp drop in stocks would have the reverse impact, a so-called negative wealth effect, making richer households more averse to spending, which could lead to a recession.

Days after closing more than a dozen restaurants, Italian American restaurant chain Buca di Beppo has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company, known for serving big portions to large groups and its kitschy decor, said it intends to use the bankruptcy process to restructure its operations and keep 44 locations open, including restaurants in Pasadena, Universal City, Encino and Redondo Beach.

“This is a strategic step towards a strong future for Buca di Beppo,” Rich Saultz, the company’s president, said in a statement. “While the restaurant industry has faced significant challenges, this move is the best next step for our brand.”

William Snyder, chief restructuring officer, said the remaining restaurants were open for business and “we expect day-to-day operations to continue uninterrupted” during bankruptcy. Gift cards, reservations and promotions remain active and redeemable.

Buca di Beppo has been reducing its brick-and-mortar footprint for years, beset by many of the same issues faced by restaurant competitors: sluggish consumer spending, higher employee wages and increased food costs among them. The Orlando, Fla., company, which saw sales decrease 4.7% last year, peaked at 95 locations in 2013, according to Restaurant Business.

Last month, Buca di Beppo abruptly shut down 13 restaurants, about 20% of its portfolio, including a location in Sacramento. The privately held company, which was founded in Minneapolis in 1993, is opening one new location.

The closures in July and Monday’s filing mark the latest sign of distress for the restaurant industry.

In June, Rubio’s Coastal Grill closed 48 of its California restaurants, including 24 in the Los Angeles area. Days later, the Carlsbad, Calif., fast-casual restaurant chain filed for bankruptcy protection and said it was seeking a buyer. It continues to operate 86 restaurants in California, Arizona and Nevada.

“Like the restaurant industry overall, Rubio’s has been negatively affected over the past few years by diminishing in-store traffic attributable to work-from-home practices remaining in place, and by rising food and utility costs that, combined with significant increases to the minimum wage in California, put pressure on a number of its locations,” the company said in a statement.

And in May, Red Lobster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after closing dozens of locations.

The seafood chain has foundered in recent years because of managerial missteps, the effects of a sale to a private equity firm a decade ago and, most recently, its inability to bounce back after pandemic lockdowns. Red Lobster said its remaining locations — about 580 in the U.S. and Canada, as well as franchise locations in a handful of other countries — would operate as usual during the bankruptcy process.