- If the DOJ wants to level the playing field, draconian overreach in antitrust enforcement is not the solution, writes Gerard Gibert.
Antitrust regulators in Washington are currently pushing for extreme changes affecting some of our most utilized and popular companies. With this push comes the responsibility to proceed in a measured and thoughtful manner that improves our economy and is, at the very least, legal. Unfortunately, however, we are seeing some dramatic and questionable shifts by antitrust regulators that will likely benefit no one besides politicians and lawyers.
One needs to look no further than the recent antitrust case against Google to see how excessive Washington regulators have become. Despite the judge acknowledging that Google offers the best and most preferred search product on the market, he still found that Google is a monopoly. He is now considering an array of remedies that will harm consumers, damage our economy, and aid our geopolitical rivals.
The proposed remedies could be disastrous for consumers. One potential remedy might involve distributing user information to various Google competitors or even making it entirely public. For decades, consumers have used Google Search, watched YouTube videos, scrolled through Android phones, and browsed the internet on Chrome, trusting that Google would keep their data safe. They chose Google’s products explicitly in the face of other options. They didn’t know that their data could be made public to benefit Google’s competitors or sold to potential competitors that politicians and lawyers in Washington want to prop up. The privacy concerns in these potential remedies cannot be understated.
It’s clear from the recent behavior of top antitrust regulators that the Justice Department’s plan has little to do with helping consumers. Antitrust laws exist to protect users from harm—the ‘consumer welfare standard’—not to boost competitors struggling to keep up or penalize companies like Google for excelling. Punishing a leading and successful company by forcing it to share troves of user data would only potentially harm consumers.
This doesn’t even address concerns recently raised by former President Trump about the potential remedies against Google aiding China. Former President Trump is right to be concerned, as a weaker Google could open the door for Chinese rivals to enter the global market in search and other services. Imagine the concerns created by TikTok but amplified to services like search that everyone uses daily. The bureaucrats and trial lawyers pursuing remedies like the ones proposed in the Google search case could be creating a new tech titan in China, one controlled not by shareholders but by the Chinese Communist Party.
If the DOJ wants to level the playing field, draconian overreach in antitrust enforcement is not the solution. To compete with Google, other companies should focus on building better products of their own—not expect to be handed the recipe for Google’s success. Simply giving competitors Google’s data stifles innovation, disincentivizes companies from taking chances that may help consumers, and leaves everyone worse off with fewer high-quality options.
Perhaps even more importantly, forcing Google to relinquish its customers’ search data and proprietary methods undermines the trust it has built with users, effectively punishing the company for being the best at what it does. Rather than fostering a competitive landscape, these extreme remedies would diminish the quality of services that millions choose every day and set dangerous precedents for the tech industry.
