Google Verdicts Lead US to ask For Breakup of Monopoly

The US Justice Department in late April asked a federal court to order the breakup of Google as a monopoly in online search.  Google was found in 2024 to have broken antitrust laws to create its dominance in online search.  Its app store has also been found in violation of antitrust laws, and in early April the company's ad technology business was judged to have run afoul of the antitrust laws as well.  These actions, now spanning multiple administrations, show that the government is serious about addressing Google's role as a Silicon Valley 800-pound gorilla.  

WHY IT MATTERS

The government has used antitrust/competition laws to go after tech companies before.  In the early 80's, the Bell telephone system was broken into pieces (regional Bells, which then broke into further telecoms companies and wireless/cable/fiber companies as tech changed) for illegal monopoly control over the nation's telephone infrastructure.  IBM faced multiple antitrust complaints in the 60's and 70's as the consumer computer age dawned and it commanded much of the computing market.  Most recently, Microsoft spent a decade or more fighting antitrust charges in connection with claims relating to its browser software in the late 90's and early 2000's, as the internet was coming into its own.

The idea behind antitrust laws is that consumers benefit from competition.  Anyone who feels stuck with their television or wireless carrier can probably sympathize with this view.  The US had a robust period of “trust-busting” in the early 20th century but has not been a vigorous enforcer of antitrust laws for decades, especially in comparison to the EU.  As Silicon Valley and Big Tech have become so central to our lives, however, they have attracted increasing attention from regulators.  It is no secret that Google basically IS search – its brand name is also now a verb meaning “to search for something online.”  That makes it a fairly obvious target for monopoly investigations; this is especially tempting when it also is a huge, market-defining player in ad tech as well.  Google and other similar companies face investigation fairly regularly in the EU, and in some cases have had to modify their operations in the EU to comply with local order.  

In addition, and perhaps more interesting, is that their increasing control over the devices, networks, and platforms where consumers assemble and communicate – including about political issues – has made these tech companies especially loathsome to many in DC.  Big Tech, including Google, holds a unique position in that what used to be done in the “public square” is increasingly done via proprietary platforms and in tech environments that are tightly controlled and designed to keep consumers inside them.  We may be seeing the era when regulators and courts decide this is close enough to the “public square” to be worth changing how tech companies interact with the public.  Antitrust is one way to do that, and possibly easier than a constitutional fight over the regulation of speech and opinion.