✒ The “Microsoft 2.0” has landed, a big tech antitrust lawsuit that everyone has seen coming. The US government hasn’t brought an antitrust case of this size since 1998.
The DoJ says in the filing that “Google is so dominant that ‘Google’ is not only a noun to identify the company and the Google search engine but also a verb that means to search the internet.” Quantitatively, the search engine has accounted for nearly 90% of all general-search-engine queries in the US (and almost 90% of queries on mobile devices).
Being a monopoly itself is not illegal (we even have a board game to glorify it), but engaging in anticompetitive behaviour is. Such as spending billions of dollars on exclusive agreements with device manufacturers, mobile carriers and web browser developers to make Google the default search engine and difficult to delete.
However, it would be a challenge to prove that the alleged practices of restricting competition have harmed consumers given that the service is free to use. Price has been the primary measure of consumer harm in the US antitrust cases.
That’s why the DoJ argues in the filing that Google’s conduct harmed consumers by reducing the quality of general search services (including dimensions such as privacy, data protection and use of consumer data), lessening choice in general search services, and impeding innovation.
It is a historic day for the US government’s relationship with big techs, and it is likely to be just the beginning of the sector’s legal woes.
The case will probably take years to settle. The market reaction? Shares of Alphabet by the end of the day were up 1%. Perhaps investors are more focused on next quarter’s earning rather than the long-term potential disaster that the company faces.