Illustration: Tiffany Herring/Axios
The Justice Department's landmark ruling in its case against Google proves something that had long been disputed: It's possible to apply old-school U.S. antitrust law to modern technology.
Why it matters: The DOJ's proof of concept could reverberate to Capitol Hill, where for years lawmakers have either been arguing new antitrust laws are necessary for the digital age or that our current set are working just fine.
Driving the news: On Monday, a federal judge ruled that Google violated federal antitrust rules to maintain a monopoly in the online search market.
- The ruling mostly focused on the contracts Google maintains with companies including Apple, Android and Mozilla to make Google the default search on those mobile devices.
- It marked a major development in a case first filed under the Trump administration in 2020.
- Google plans to appeal, and has argued everything it does is in service of a better experience for consumers.
Flashback: In 2021, a Democrat-led House attempted a major push to pass new antitrust laws updated for the digital economy.
- It ultimately failed, but Sen. Amy Klobuchar has been leading efforts in the Senate since then to keep hope alive on some of those antitrust bills.
What they're saying: "I just think [Google] keeps getting sued, and then at the same time they're fighting any rules of the road in Congress, and then they get sued on the very same topic," Klobuchar told Axios in an interview this week.
- "That's why, you know, I continue to hope that I can pass one of my bills, which includes some remedies that would get at this," she said.
- "I can't predict the remedies [for this case], but to me, it's almost certain that [Google] is not going to be able to have these contracts where they pay off other companies to make them the default search engine."
On what's next for antitrust in Congress, Klobuchar said: "We just keep gaining interest in our bills, and this will make it even more so."
- Having Rep. Jim Jordan at the helm of the House Judiciary Committee, who has no interest in passing new antitrust laws, has made it difficult to make any progress, she said. But "nevertheless we persist, and of course, the next thing on the agenda should be the competition bills."
The other side: Those who have thought the DOJ's case against Google was misguided from the start caution the U.S. against becoming too much like Europe, where competition rulings and new laws have had mixed results.
- "The ruling in the lawsuit against Google started by President Trump in 2020 shows that changing our rule of law approach to antitrust in ways that risk free speech is not necessary to hold Big Tech accountable," Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, a Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, posted on X.
- "It's hard to argue credibly that we need new tech-specific competition laws when the government already has five pending Big Tech cases under our existing antitrust laws — and just won one of them," Adam Kovacevich, CEO of Chamber of Progress, a tech industry coalition, told Axios.
What's next: Remedies for the case are not yet determined, but are likely to focus on the future of search, how the search market has changed over time, and take into account the explosion of generative AI, which is changing how search engines deliver results.
The bottom line: We probably won't hear much from the Hill on this topic until next year. But when we do, the results of the DOJ case will provide a whole new context for the conversation.
