The Key Questions That Will Decide Whether Google Is a Monopoly
The DOJ’s antitrust case is simpler than you might expect
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit this week alleging that Google is an illegal monopoly. Now comes the tricky part: proving it.
Once a humble search engine with no business model, Google has grown into such a vast conglomerate that the word “monopoly” seems almost inadequate to describe its scope. For that matter, even the word “Google” is inadequate — the search engine and its affiliated ad business are now just part of the broader, trillion-dollar Alphabet empire.
And yet the question of whether and how Google constitutes an illegal monopoly gets complicated in a hurry. Is its dominance of internet search a problem in itself? Does the problem stem from the breadth of its business, which spans search, online advertising, online video, mobile operating systems, cloud services, smart home devices, and much more? Does it arise from the interactions between these business lines, the way Google leverages its market power in one arena to boost its business in another? Or is there no real monopolization problem here at all, given that most users freely choose Google’s products over those of its rivals and reap the benefit of services that are offered to them at no monetary cost?
