Alphabet’s Google is on the verge of a breakup at the hands of antitrust officials from the federal government.

After a federal court labeled the tech giant “a monopoly” in the search engine market in August, the federal government laid out possible plans for how Google could be chopped up and lucrative parts of the business sold off.

Those who oppose Big Tech companies because of their size and success cheered this decision but willfully ignored how the government’s actions could lead to worse outcomes for the American people. 

Consumers may see prices rise while losing access to popular features and services they’ve come to depend on, such as data privacy and security online. Small businesses stand to lose tools that enable them to compete fairly in the marketplace and gain access to customers worldwide.

The Government’s Proposals

Last week, in a federal court filing, the Justice Department laid out a proposed framework of remedies in the Google search case.

As we wrote previously, at the extreme, antitrust advocates have pushed for Google to be broken up, but there could be more moderate solutions to address the Court’s concerns about contracts Google has entered into. The DOJ’s framework may, in the end, pursue the extreme approach.

The Washington Post reports:

Prosecutors listed possible fixes including a ban on Google paying electronics makers such as Apple to make Google search the default option on their devices; requirements for Google to share data used by its search engine with rivals; and educational campaigns supported by Google to help consumers better understand their choices for search engines.

Such changes would have significant effects on Google, reducing the ubiquity of its search engine and cutting into some of the company’s lucrative revenue streams. 

While federal prosecutors did not zero in on a breakup of the company, they mentioned it among the possible methods to restrain Google from using its various business arms — like its Chrome browser or Play app store — to favor its own search engine. A “structural” remedy, the legal term for a breakup, could also be kept as a backup measure if Google is not compliant with other remedies, prosecutors said.

In a statement, Google blasted the DOJ’s proposals as “radical” with motivations that exceed just addressing the case at hand: 

This case is about a set of search distribution contracts. Rather than focus on that, the government seems to be pursuing a sweeping agenda that will impact numerous industries and products, with significant unintended consequences for consumers, businesses, and American competitiveness. The DOJ’s outline also comes at a time when competition in how people find information is blooming, with all sorts of new entrants emerging and new technologies like AI transforming the industry.

The unintended consequences of the proposed remedies that Google outlined caught our attention:

  • Forcing Google to share our search queries, clicks, and results with competitors risks our privacy and security.
  • Hampering Google’s AI tools comes at the expense of innovation. 
  • Splitting off Chrome or Android would break them, raise the cost of devices,… and jeopardize security and make patching security bugs harder.
  • Advertising changes would make online ads less valuable for publishers and merchants and less useful for consumers. 

If you don’t want your midday—or midnight—searches to be shared with other search engines, that may be less committed to Google’s privacy standards, there is reason to worry. Added costs for already pricey devices, less seamless integration of search functions on new devices, and difficulty getting needed security fixes all don’t bode well for consumers.

The judge will have to balance these concerns, if they peter out, with the remedies that are proposed to determine the best way forward. Hopefully, the court will keep consumer interests top of mind.

Something Amiss?

We can’t help but wonder whether there is another agenda afoot. The Biden Justice Department and other antitrust regulators, such as Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), are not focused on consumers’ benefit. Instead, they seek to overturn the consumer welfare standard, the approach to addressing antitrust concerns that guided the FTC for decades, in pursuit of a heavier-handed approach that would cut Big Tech companies down to size.

Mark Jamison of the American Enterprise expressed a similar sentiment:

Given that a breakup does not address the core issues of this case, the DOJ’s pursuit of such a remedy seems driven more by ideology or a desire to punish than by sound legal reasoning. Khan and Wu’s writings suggest a belief that government intervention can successfully reshape industries at will, but this assumption ignores the fact that the most brilliant minds in Silicon Valley and Redmond have yet to crack the code for matching Google’s success. It’s unlikely that government lawyers will succeed where the best tech minds have not.

As a law student, Khan penned a now infamous Yale Law Journal article titled “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” in which she advocated for breaking up Amazon or hobbling it with regulations. As a recent National Review article notes, Khan’s claims then actually undercut the DOJ’s evidence against Google now: 

Yet just four pages into that 2017 essay, Ms. Khan stumbled on something important. She astutely observed that, “Close to half of all online buyers go directly to Amazon first to search for products.” Think about that for a minute: If half of all searches for consumer products start with Amazon, how can the Justice Department now claim, as it does, that “Google has accounted for almost 90 percent of all search queries in the United States”? 

The federal government charged Google with monopolizing the search industry through anticompetitive actions specifically, establishing contracts with companies like Apple and wireless companies to preference Google search being installed on devices and in browsers. 

Yet, Google is neither the only, primary, nor even first search destination that users turn to depending on what they are looking for. As the National Review article highlights, the more specific the query, the less likely you may be to utilize Google search rather than other aggregators of information:

If you were looking for a restaurant, would you start with Google or try restaurant-rating and booking sites such as Open Table, Yelp, Zagat, or Trip Advisor? If looking for home services, such as repair or cleaning, would you start with Google or with, say, Home Advisor, Thumbtack, Angi, or Home Depot? If looking for a new physician, would you wing it on Google or look at AMA Doctor Finder, Healthgrades, RateMDs, or WebMD? If searching for clothing, would you ask Google for the generic type of clothing — say, a white, men’s shirt — or go directly to sites selling clothing brands you prefer? When searching for home decor, would you try posing general questions on Google or look for help at Houzz, Pinterest, Wayfair, or specialized sites for lighting, rugs, and furniture? When planning travel, would you shun information from Expedia, KAYAK, Trivago, or Priceline in favor of Google? If looking for a book or CD, might you consider checking Amazon or Apple rather than just Google? If looking for someone to date, would you consult Google or a dating site? You get the point.

We do get the point. Nonetheless, the court did not and it agreed with the DOJ. Now, we wait to see what remedy the court will pursue.

Bottom Line:

We have good reasons to worry about the outcomes for consumers. Breaking up Google would likely create massive financial costs, worsen user experiences, and do little to address the actual issues raised in the case.