Ganging Up on Google

January 8th, 2024

A jury recently ruled against Google in the Fortnite case, granting all 11 antitrust claims leveled by Epic Games. This decision will certainly reshape the app market and force the transfer of monumental amounts of capital from Google to app developers.

Google recently settled a multi-billion class-action privacy lawsuit in antitrust claims that it used its “incognito” mode to track consumers.

Sixteen red and blue states will soon force Alphabet Google to defend itself against antitrust charges.

Google recently agreed to pay $700 million to settle a lawsuit with every state and several territories after being accused of allowing its app store to monopolistically overcharge customers.

Google can look ahead this year to defending itself against a major antitrust case from the Biden Administration’s DOJ Antitrust Department. If antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter wins his case, it will force a company built on advertising to divest from advertising technology.

And then there is the European Union, which levied an $8 billion fine that Google is now appealing.

See a pattern here? The multipronged, multistate, multinational effort to go after Google on almost every front is more reminiscent of Get Carter than it is of the Pelican Brief. Google may be big, but no company is so big it can withstand efforts by state, federal and foreign governments to dismantle it.

Would we better off – as consumers and as citizens – if governments did dismantle Google? Do conservatives, who admittedly have legitimate reasons to feel aggrieved at Silicon Valley’s slanted content moderation, really want to give the government the power to crush a company? And rest assured, if Biden Administration officials can crush Google, they can take a deep breath, crack their knuckles, and crush anyone.

In the year ahead, we’ll examine the merits and outcomes of each action.

But I just want to start the year by asking if we’re allowing European jealousy and progressive ire at a successful capitalist venture to degrade and perhaps disable one of the most successful American companies in history.

Alphabet employs enough people to populate a fairly large city. Google’s outsized equity value fattens the retirement plans of millions of working Americans. Conservatives would be well advised to stand athwart this judicial guerilla war and yell “Stop,” while subjecting these many existing claims to the rational metrics of the Consumer Welfare Standard.