- Chip Pickering writes that the Department of Justice is actively undermining competition in the tech space as it tries to choose winners and losers in the marketplace.
It’s been nearly a year since the Biden U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) won its antitrust lawsuit against Google, and several remedies have been proposed as what they’re calling an attempt to restore competition and prevent the tech giant from leveraging its market power.
But far from improving competition in the tech space, the DOJ is actively undermining it by trying to choose winners and losers in the marketplace. Their proposed remedies will do significantly more harm than good, hurting everyday consumers, undermining innovation and weaking U.S. global leadership of the digital space.
One of the main proposals from the DOJ is to forcibly break up the company, spinning off core parts of its business like Chrome and Android, as separate entities. This “remedy” will only hurt the millions of consumers that rely on Google’s products and services everyday – from small business owners to university students and every consumer in-between. Chrome and other Google-owned services are free to consumers and thus don’t generate enough revenue to withstand on their own. Without Google’s scale to support them, these services would need to rely on profits only achieved by burdening consumers with costs and pesky ads, undermining their quality severely and threatening their viability.
The consequences of disrupting Google services will extend far beyond the everyday consumer, impacting entire economies. In 2024, Google services—including Search, Play, Cloud, YouTube and advertising tools—helped generate $850 billion of economic activity for millions of American businesses, nonprofits, publishers, creators, and developers. That same year, 19+ million American businesses used Google’s tools at no cost to generate more than 2 billion direct connections—including phone calls, requests for directions, messages, booking, and business reviews.
What’s more concerning is the threat to national security and consumer privacy the DOJ’s proposals raise. Consumers who use Google often opt-in to sharing certain data for a more tailored search experience, allowing the platform to curate search results personalized to them. The DOJ has proposed to force Google to simply hand this data over to its largest competitors, unbeknownst to its consumers. This would be a complete erosion of consumer trust and invasion of privacy, trading consumers’ sensitive data and our sense of national security just so foreign competitors can free-ride off Google’s investments and innovation. Antitrust policy is supposed to be centered around consumer welfare – yet these proposals only risk consumer safety.
On top of the consumer risks, these proposals will hinder the U.S. from leading in the global tech space significantly at a time when competition is fiercer than ever. Google is a leading developer and large proponent of the U.S.’s competitive edge against foreign adversaries like China. We are merely scratching the surface of groundbreaking technological breakthroughs like artificial intelligence or autonomous vehicles – implementing such limiting regulations now would hinder innovation and deter investments, guaranteeing our backseat in the technology race.
Ensuring fair business practices is a commendable goal but doing it at the expense of consumers and America’s technological innovations is not the right or even legal way to achieve it. Implementing the DOJ’s remedies would put the U.S. in a dangerous position, harming consumers and economies, hindering innovation and risking national security.
Chip Pickering
