If the ruling is that no one can pay to be the default search engine then… welp.

I don't know why people keep speculating that this would be the ruling.

Paying for default placement is a simple commercial transaction that only becomes problematic when you're already a monopoly and can spend 10% of your billions in revenue to stay on top and keep smaller contenders out. Is there anything in what the judge has said that would suggest that they view the simple act of having a paid default as being anti-competitive in and of itself?

yep, the point is to bust up google's monopoly, not to kill other browsers and search engines.