On Tuesday, the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google of historic significance. Many commentaries have noted that it marks the return of the U.S. government to a role that some have feared it had abandoned: to discipline powerful monopolies.
What complaints the antitrust lawsuit includes:
- Google stroke multibillion-dollar deals to make its search engine the default option on smartphones
- Google controls 88 percent of the U.S. search engine market, giving it unparalleled power which the company uses to effectively prevent alternative search engines from competing fairly
- Google monopolizes the search ad market
How Google’s monopolistic position may harm consumers:
- Google’s control over search means it can include hidden costs and charge marketers higher fees for ads
- Due to a lack of few alternatives, Google doesn’t have much incentive to optimize its search engine
- This centralization of power in Google has led to a weakened press, as the platform incentivizes virality and sensationalism over high-quality journalism
- Google is not free – users pay with their loss of privacy
This lawsuit is likely to stretch on for years and it will be interesting to see how this plays out in court. Will Google be forced to sell off parts of the company? Will it be regulated more like a public utility, required to license out patents for its algorithms? Will anything happen at all? Only time will tell. In any case, the suit has already sent a powerful message. It may even send off a cascade of lawsuits against other big tech companies.
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