OP-ED
The Danger Behind DOJ’s Plan to Divest Google’s Chrome
December 4, 2024
Jonathan Kanter, outgoing chief of the Justice Department Antitrust Division, proposes that federal Judge Amit Mehta strip the world’s number one search company of its number one web browser, Chrome. The rationale is that Google owns 90 percent of the market for search, a claim that prompted Judge Mehta to uncritically declare Google a “monopolist” in search.
Such a divestiture would be a historic mistake, setting a bad precedent for American technology leadership. This mistake begins with Kanter overlooking slightly broader definitions of the search market that show it is in fact highly competitive and already undergoing a disruptive phase.
The disruptors are legion. One is Amazon, which is emerging as a competitor in search for products. Amazon is set to generate $70 billion in digital ad revenue next year. As for Google, its share of the U.S. search-advertising market is projected to soon fall below 50 percent for the first time. Walmart.com, Autotrader, and Facebook Marketplace are all digging into the lucrative search-advertising market.
Perhaps the biggest threat to Google’s dominance comes from AI, with the leading competitor being OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“Google had this seemingly insurmountable position in search until AI came around, and now AI is to search what e-commerce was to Walmart,” NYU business professor Melissa Schilling told The Wall Street Journal’s Christopher Mims. Google is also in danger of facing the same strategic threat faced by Meta’s Facebook. Just as generational change is leading younger generations to new and flashier social media platforms, like TikTok, tech-savvy younger users are using AI for search, like ChatGPT, that intuit a questioner’s intent.
All of this seems lost on Kanter as he boxes up his knickknacks for his January departure. To the last minute, he is determined to continue in caricature the failed antitrust suits of the past. The antitrust suit against Google could well end like the complaint against IBM, which lasted from 1969 to 1982. That was long enough for the case to become so technologically superannuated that the Justice Department itself told the court it was “without merit” and withdrew it.
The basic principle of Kanter’s case is that it is a just punishment to force a company centered around search to divest itself of its principal browser. Similarly, the Federal Trade Commission under Chair Lina Khan wants to forbid Amazon—which delivers goods to people’s homes—from directing its suppliers to its national system of fulfillment and delivery that took years and billions of dollars to build out. The government also contends that Apple should not control the market for apps that work on its iPhones. Meta should not be allowed to operate a free social media network, Facebook, and own a service, Instagram, that primarily delivers free images to people on social media.
If Google is forced to sell Chrome, it will similarly be stripped of the fruits of years of research and investment. A forced loss of Chrome would be like telling Boeing to quit making airplanes and GM to forget about cars. There is also talk of spinning off Google’s AI and Android’s operating system as well, an investment of billions of dollars in response to the competitive pressure from AI companies. Isn’t competition what antitrust is meant to promote?
Of course, sympathy for Big Tech plays on a tiny violin. What should not be overlooked is the national interest. Somehow it is lost on progressive regulators that a handful of tech and biotech companies provide almost all of the research and development in America today. Perhaps most of the groundbreaking technologies of the first quarter of the 21st century are due to the R&D of these few big companies. This is the innovation machine progressive antitrusters want to kill.
Yet even some “Khanservatives” in Donald Trump’s orbit also hunger to degrade America’s national champions. Khan’s last-minute opening of an investigation of Microsoft could provide a bridge for the next administration to continue investigations and complaints meant to break companies that indisputably lead the world in technology.
As with any murder, the detective’s eternal question is: Qui bono? It won’t be other tech companies that benefit, not if they are all whittled down to size and prevented from cross-pollinating technologies like AI and operating systems. It won’t be Europe, either, which pioneers new cuisines but not much in the way of disruptive technology. So who benefits? Hint: It has five letters and begins with a “C.”
Not that I am suggesting that Kanter and Khan are agents of China. They are just two bright people who have allowed their intelligence to be curbed by an allegiance to stale ideas. It is up to Donald Trump to follow his free-market instincts and appoint regulators who will harmonize antitrust law with the needs of consumers and the national interest.
Robert H. Bork Jr. is the president of the Antitrust Education Project.
Originally published at American Greatness.