Wednesday August 7, 2024; 10:47 AM EDT
- Finding that a company is a monopoly matters less than determining a proper remedy, which is not the same as punishment. The purpose of the remedy in antitrust law should be restoration of competition in the market in which a company is deemed to monopolize.#
- The judge has found Google to be a monopoly in a very specific market, and so the remedies that ought to be decided on should be intended to restore competition in that market. My interpretation of the ruling is that Google is a monopolist of the market of selling text ads as part of web search results and it gained that monopoly by paying Apple and Mozilla to be the default search engine of their products. #
- In my opinion the remedy in the context of the market above is specific and what Ben Thompson suggests, prohibit Google from entering contracts to make Google Search the default search engine for other products and dissolve existing contracts. I do not think breaking up Google would have any affect of restoring competition in the text ad in web search results market. Note that such a remedy would not prevent a company like Apple to continue to use Google as the default they just wouldn't get paid by Google to do so, and I wonder whether not allowing Google to be selected as the default for a period of time would be more harmful to Apple or Mozilla than Google. In fact, Apple and Mozilla stands to lose a lot money from such a remedy.#
- Some will suggest that Android should be split of as a separate company, but does Android have a significant amount of share of the smartphone market for that to matter? I don't think so, and consequently the more meaningful remedy is tied to Apple. If Apple is not paid by Google to be the default search engine on Apple products, would Apple choose Bing or DuckDuckGo? #
- We learned from the Microsoft Antitrust case in the 90s that final resolution of antitrust law takes a long time and markets will change during that time. What is more likely to happen is that by the time the case moves through the appeals process to the Supreme Court users may be using AI-based tools in place of Google search. #