It was revealed Tuesday that Google, the liberal leviathan and search engine, is being targeted by the Department of Justice for antitrust violations. The WSJ homes in on the action

“The Justice Department filed a long-awaited antitrust lawsuit Tuesday alleging that Google uses anticompetitive tactics to preserve a monopoly for its flagship search engine and related advertising business, illegally choking off potential competition. The Justice Department alleged that Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc. [US:GOOGL], is maintaining its status as gatekeeper to the internet through an unlawful web of exclusionary and interlocking business agreements that shut out competitors. The government alleged that Google uses billions of dollars collected from advertisements on its platform to pay for mobile-phone manufacturers, carriers and browsers, like Apple Inc.’s Safari, to maintain Google as their preset, default search engine.”

#BREAKING: Today, the Department of Justice launched an antitrust lawsuit against Google.

How it started: How it's going: pic.twitter.com/8Pk9yNtq4R

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) October 20, 2020

“Google achieved some success in its early years, and no one begrudges that,” Deputy U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said. “If the government does not enforce its antitrust laws to enable competition, we could lose the next wave of innovation. If that happens, Americans may never get to see the next Google.”

Kent Walker, Google’s chief legal officer, responded, “People use Google because they choose to—not because they’re forced to or because they can’t find alternatives. Like countless other businesses, we pay to promote our services, just like a cereal brand might pay a supermarket to stock its products at the end of a row or on a shelf at eye level.”

Almost all state attorneys general are investigating Google, while three other tech giants–Facebook Inc., Apple and Amazon.com are all on the potential chopping block. A group of 11 state attorneys general, all Republicans, have joined the Justice Department’s case. Even Democrats are on board.

“We see vigorous competition,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said, pointing to travel sites and consumer searches on Amazon. “We are working hard, focused on the users, to innovate.”

But Democrat Rep. David Cicilline of Rhode Island told Mr. Pichai. “Google evolved from a turnstile to the rest of the web to a walled garden that increasingly keeps users within its sights…The Subcommittee’s investigation uncovered extensive evidence showing that Google maintained and extended its monopoly to harm competition. It is critical that the Justice Department’s lawsuit focuses on Google’s monopolization of search and search advertising, while also targeting the anti-competitive business practices Google is using to leverage this monopoly into other areas, such as maps, browsers, video, and voice assistants.”

“Today’s lawsuit is the most important antitrust case in a generation,” said Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri. “Google and its fellow Big Tech monopolists exercise unprecedented power over the lives of ordinary Americans, controlling everything from the news we read to the security of our most personal information. And Google in particular has gathered and maintained that power through illegal means.”

This piece was written by David Kamioner on October 20, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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