This week the Biden administration’s Department of Justice made clear their intentions for Google: destroy the most efficient search company in the world.
The premise for this decision was a federal court ruling last August in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Google that Google was a monopolist in the market for general search services on the internet. Being a monopolist is, in itself, not an antitrust violation. The court, however, ruled that Google had maintained and expanded its market share by reason of it being the default search engine on its own Google’s Chrome browser and by inducing Apple to make Google the default search engine on Apple’s Safari browser, in return for sharing its search advertising revenue with Apple. This left too little room for other search engines, like Microsoft’s Bing, in the court’s view.
This finding should not have been the premise for an antitrust violation. The court found that consumers preferred having a browser pre-loaded and for the browser to pre-load a search engine. The court found Google Search was the best search engine in the market. Apple, especially, has championed simplicity of operation in its tech offerings to consumers. Nevertheless, the court gave preference to Google competitors, like Microsoft, rather than Google’s consumers. This is a parody of antitrust law—which exists to help consumers, not to favor competitors.
Following its contrarian logic, the court asked the Biden Department of Justice to recommend how to fix the problem the court had found. The obvious solution would be to end Google’s status as the default search engine for Google Chrome or Apple’s Safari.
Instead of recommending that simple step, however, the Biden Department of Justice has just proposed that Google be broken up. This approach reflects the kind of logic famously identified with President Obama’s Chief of Staff: never to let a good crisis go to waste. The “good” crisis, in the view of President Biden’s DOJ, was the court’s finding that Google was a monopolist. Showing the antipathy the Biden administration has consistently displayed toward large tech companies, DOJ seized this premise to destroy one of the big tech companies it has long demonized.
The simpler alternative would require Google to leave room on its Chrome browser for at least one other search engine to be pre-loaded, and to insist that Google do the same in any contract it reached with Apple regarding a pre-loaded search engine on Apple’s Safari. Users would then choose the browser they wanted. They could make the choice once and for all, or every time they booted up their mobile device, as they wished. If a user made the former choice, the streamlined user experience (the heart of Apple’s business model) would be impacted hardly at all. Consumer preference would be respected, and the synergy of Google’s search innovation mechanism would not be interrupted.
To the Biden DOJ, however, the opportunity to break up Google was too attractive to be ignored. It is a solution wholly disproportionate to the harm discerned by the court. At the very least, the court should not rule until it has heard from the Trump Administration, which, despite its own strong populist tones, can offer advice “unburdened” by the Biden Administration’s bias against large high-tech companies. The new administration might actually offer something like this solution; and, if Google accepts it, the fall-out from the court’s erroneous antitrust condemnation of Google would be limited. The court would then enter an order implementing a solution tailored to the problem the court actually found, rather than a boot-strap for antitrust enforcers to champion their “big is bad” view of American high-tech enterprise.
