How Do You Solve a Problem Like Google Search? Courts Must Enable Competition While Protecting Privacy.

<

div class=”field field–name-body field–type-text-with-summary field–label-hidden”>

<

div class=”field__items”>

<

div class=”field__item even”>

Can we get from a world where Google is synonymous with search to a world  where other search engines have a real chance to compete? The U.S. and state governments’ bipartisan antitrust suit, challenging the many ways that Google has maintained its search monopoly, offers an opportunity.

Antitrust enforcers have proposed a set of complementary remedies, from giving users a choice of search engine, to forcing Google to spin off Chrome and possibly Android into separate companies. Overall, this is the right approach. Google’s dominance in search is too entrenched to yield to a single fix. But there are real risks to users in the mix as well: Forced sharing of people’s sensitive search queries with competitors could seriously undermine user privacy, as could a breakup without adequate safeguards.

Let’s break it down.

The Antitrust Challenge to Google Search

The Google Search antitrust suit began in 2020 under the first Trump administration, brought by the Department of Justice and 11 states. (Another 38 states filed a companion suit.) The heart of the suit was Google’s agreements with mobile phone makers, browser makers, and wireless carriers, requiring that Google Search be the default search engine, in return for revenue share payments including up to $20 billion per year that Google paid to Apple. A separate case, filed in 2023, challenged Google’s dominance in online advertising. Following a bench trial in summer 2023, Judge Amit Mehta of the D.C. federal court found Google’s search placement agreements to be illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act, because they foreclosed competition in the markets for “general search” and “general search text advertising.”

The antitrust enforcers proposed a set of remedies in fall 2024, and filed a revised version this month, signalling that the new administration remains committed to the case. A hearing on remedies i

[…]
Content was cut in order to protect the source.Please visit the source for the rest of the article.