It took the US Department of Justice four years of painstaking preparation to win its sweeping antitrust case against Google’s online search dominance. What it will ultimately mean, however, depends on what happens next.

The same judge who this week declared Google a “monopolist”, Amit Mehta, will now determine what remedies to impose: anything from restricting its ability to strike the agreements at the heart of the case to forcibly breaking up the company. 

Those remedies could transform a business that has vaulted Google’s parent Alphabet, led by chief executive Sundar Pichai, into the ranks of the world’s most valuable companies. But equally it could prove too little, too late to stop the dominance of Google, whose name has become shorthand for online search.