American trustbusters take on Google

long time coming. On October 20th the Department of Justice at last launched a federal antitrust lawsuit against Google. It is the first time American trustbusters have gone after big tech since their protracted battle against Microsoft 20 years ago. Eleven states signed on to the suit, in which theaccuses the technology giant of abusing its online-search monopoly. Others are likely to bring their own cases against the firm. William Barr, the attorney-general, called it “monumental”.

Google and its parent company, Alphabet, are not the only ones to come under pressure. Amazon, Facebook and Apple have been variously lambasted for enabling election manipulation, violating privacy and abusing their digital monopolies. In that grand scheme of things, the Google case can seem piffling. It carves out only some alleged misdeeds in one part of the business of a single firm. Specifically, the’s lawyers accuse Google of an illegal monopoly in “general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising”.

The sums involved are large but the charges are narrow, argues Mark Shmulik of Bernstein, a research firm. They cover only text search, not images or video. Fiona Scott Morton of Yale University, an antitrust expert critical of Google , notes that the suit does not tackle allegations that Google abuses its market power in digital advertising or the claims that it handicaps potential rivals in specialised searches such as travel.’s narrow focus may be shrewd.

If so, it has a lot of walking to do—and could end in an unremarkable settlement, with Google making token changes to its behaviour and paying a fine that looks hefty until you consider its annual net profit of $34bn. By then, technology may have evolved to make the suit appear less relevant, as happened with Microsoft.’s move does carry a whiff of grandness.

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