At one point in time, Google’s motto was “Don’t be evil.” In the mid-2010s, they removed that. Its removal roughly corresponded to when Google went from being known for its search function to being known for…almost everything.
The company has grown gargantuan in size. Its parent company, Alphabet, is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Worldwide, Google’s Search function comprises over 90 percent of all search engine usage. Its browser, Chrome, takes up almost 70 percent of the browser market (Apple’s Safari, which comes on all Macbooks, takes up 16 percent – meaning Google is effectively the default for all non-Apple computers and plenty of Apple computers). Gemini, its AI, is built into its search. Alphabet even owns 14 percent of Anthropic, the second-largest corporate shareholder after Amazon.
This is, unquestionably, a monopoly. While the United States federal government does not have a particular definition for the term, the Federal Trade Commission writes that courts will not rule a company is a monopoly if it “has less than 50 percent of the sales of a particular product or service within a certain geographic area,” while acknowledging that some courts “have required much higher percentages.”
Google, fairly obviously, meets either bar. This is not idle speculation: two years ago, a federal judge determined that Google “is a monopolist.” And last year, in a different case, a judge ruled that Google had formed a monopoly with its advertising business. Both cases were pursued by the Trump and Biden administrations, underscoring the bipartisan opposition to Google’s decision-making.
But even with these rulings, advocates felt let down. Joel Thayer, president of the Digital Progress Institute, summed up these feelings when he wrote, “the remedies that followed relied on behavioral fixes rather than the kind of structural relief that actually restores competition.” Almost two years after the initial ruling, Google still controls all of the entities that advocates had argued it should be divested of. Both cases are ongoing, with appeals being pursued by multiple parties. If there is to be any satisfying resolution for advocates of breaking Google’s monopoly, it is years down the road. By then, Google’s monopoly could expand even more significantly.
Unless Congress acts.
Fortunately, some senators are trying to force it to. Senators Eric Schmitt (R-MO) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), a political odd couple, introduced the SEARCH Act earlier this month. SEARCH – a backronym for “Securing Enforcement of Americans’ Right to Competition at Home” – would ban monopolies like Google (“covered platforms”) from providing “preferential treatment of a general search engine, AI search, or search access point,” and would likewise ban pre-installation, including in Chrome. It would require Google to share data and be more transparent in its advertising practices.
In short, it would actually require Google to do something about its monopolistic practices.
Skeptics may push back by arguing that the United States has plenty of antitrust legislation already on the books. And it does: since the Sherman Antitrust Act’s passage in 1890, the federal government has used its powers to break down monopolies. But that foundational legislation was written in the Benjamin Harrison administration, a time when the idea of a company gaining monopolistic control over an entire industry was new.
When Theodore Roosevelt’s administration sued Standard Oil, the case took five years – including a trip to the Supreme Court – to resolve. The original United States v. Google case was brought in 2020, and there is no sign that it will be resolved anytime soon. That’s because a law written in 1890 could not have been made for companies like Alphabet. Forcing the federal government to pursue antitrust cases against companies like Alphabet is akin to forcing it to fight in a straitjacket.
Plus, even a victory against Google would not solve the problem, as other companies could, in the future, simply replace its monopoly with their own.
The SEARCH Act would sidestep both the long legal process and this potential future occurrence entirely by immediately mandating that Google change its ways and by ensuring that no future company could act similarly.
Technologies have changed, and our laws haven’t kept up. It’s time to fix that.