Pattern Matching

The Battle That Will Define Big Tech for Decades

Google’s antitrust case won’t reshape the industry. But it’s the start of something that might.

Photo: VIEW press/Getty Images

The Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Google got a lot of attention this week, and understandably so. It mirrors the landmark antitrust case against Microsoft two decades ago, which stands as the prototypical example of the U.S. government grappling with a big tech company’s power.

But it is also, in many ways, a narrow case: It focuses exclusively on Google’s dominance of internet search and search ads, and rests on established laws and precedents. Even if successful, it’s unlikely to significantly curtail the massive reach or influence of Google’s trillion-dollar parent company, Alphabet. And it has nothing to say about other pressing issues raised by the culture and commercial ascendance of internet platforms, such as their personal data collection, digital surveillance, engagement algorithms, implicit biases, concentration of wealth and power, employment practices, or control over the flow of online information.

I’ve already written in depth about the lawsuit itself, so for this week’s Pattern Matching, I thought it might be useful to step back and review the big picture of tech…