Google's In the Hot Seat Now

Apparently, in today's world we do in fact still care about antitrust laws. What are antitrust laws? Antitrust law is a collection of (mostly) federal laws that regulate what businesses are allowed to do in terms of conduct and organization of businesses in order to prevent monopolies. There are three main antitrust laws, the Sherman Act of 1890, the Clayton Act of 1814, and the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914. The Sherman Act prohibits price fixing and the operation of cartels. It also prohibits collusive practices that restrain trade as well as monopolization. The Clayton Act restricts mergers and acquisitions of organizations that would significantly lessen competition or create a monopoly. The Federal Trade Commission Act outlaws unfair methods of competition and unfair acts or practices that affect commerce.

Antitrust enforcement occurs through lawsuits filed by the Federal Trade Commission, the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division, and private parties who have been harmed by an antitrust violation. Imagine if you own a small, successful business that a larger business finds interest in. If you refuse to sell your business to the larger entity and they start price gouging or paying secret shoppers to record staged bad interactions until you sell at a lesser price, that wouldn't be fair, would it? Nor would it be fair to consumers to have the illusion of choice when picking a wifi company, just to find out that it doesn't matter which company they chose as they are all owned by the same entity in the area. Is that really fair or a state of competition? That's basically what is happening with Google right now.

The lawsuit was first filed in October of 2020 and stands to be the biggest trial in decades concerning monopolies. The claim is that Google has abused its power as a monopoly to dominate the search engine business and has been illegally orchestrating its business dealings such that it is the first search engine users see when using cellular devices, tablets, computers - really anything with the ability to pull up a browser. Why are we talking about this now? Well, despite being filed almost 3 years ago, the court proceedings started last month. Maybe Google should have reconsidered removing "don't be evil" from their code of conduct in 2018 and they may not have ended up in the kerfuffle they're currently in.

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