A recent New York Times guest essay lambasted Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for his decision in the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google, arguing it amounted to “the meekest of punishments for abusing its monopoly of the search market,” and declaring “Google Wins, We Lose.”
Google wins? Tell that to the Justice Department, which claimed it “won significant remedies” against the company for certain search distribution agreements that were found to violate antitrust law.
In fact, Judge Mehta restricted Google from entering into exclusive distribution contracts not only for search, but also for Google Assistant and Google’s Gemini app—precisely to ensure that these sorts of anticompetitive practices did not stifle competition in AI.
But while restoring competition is the purpose of antitrust remedies, that does not justify a blanket payment ban that would harm other market participants and prevent Google from competing on the merits for default search placement.
What’s more, Judge Mehta imposed a series of syndication and data sharing measures to aid Google’s competitors. These went well beyond anything Google proposed and were not limited due to any soft spot for Google, but to make sure that, for example, consumer privacy and security were protected with things like sharing user-side data.
DOJ’s proposed breakup never made sense. What does divesting Chrome or Android have to do with Google search being the default on Apple’s browser? Judges are supposed to apply the law, not simply deliver the results desired by progressives and populists.
