Google's Industry Dominance Isn't Unprecedented—and It Isn't Forever

It was always going to be an awkward time for the government to sue Google as a "monopoly" in the world of online search. The first antitrust case brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ) against Google in late 2020 was predicated on the idea that the company had cornered the market using profit-sharing agreements and coercive tactics with third parties to make Google what it is today: a verb, used by everyday people to describe an online search. 

Predictable of most government cases, this came a bit late as Google's market position is more tenuous than ever. 

This week's remedy ruling by the U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rolled back some of the worst possible outcomes for Google in its monopoly case and laid bare just how strong competition in the search engine space really is. Mehta tossed out the DOJ's radical call for Google to break off from its Chrome browser but maintained that the company must share its search data with competitors like Bing, Safari, DuckDuckGo, and Firefox. 

It's a win-lose outcome for Google and antitrust skeptics, but it's ultimately a sign that nature might be healing the panic over the insurmountable "bigness" of American tech firms. 

But a government intervention was never needed to threaten Google's future, only time. The unique superpower of the tech sector is that firms exist under a mandate to innovate or become irrelevant. This case ultimately highlights the mortality of Google. 

Generative AI was still in development when the federal case against Google was being drafted. By the time it was brought to court and ruled upon, tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Grok had gone public and began disrupting workplaces, schools, and journalism with more dynamic and conversational search capabilities. 

Failure of imagination, not a misunderstanding of antitrust law, is what unites and drives the fresh bipartisan energy around busting so-called Big Tech monopolies. Mehta notes in the latest ruling how Google's witness, Eddy Cue of Apple, testified that Google searches within Apple's own Safari browser had declined for the first time in 22 years. And it is declining, because the world is changing fast. 

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and one of the chief change agents, has played it safe in trying not to predict whether ChatGPT could replace Google as the leader in search. His answer of "probably not" on this question is a recognition of Google's brand strength, but many consumers of digital tools will tell you that their online habits are changing organically for the first time since Google made Ask Jeeves obsolete. 

Antitrust warriors—including Democrats like former Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan and Republicans like former Attorney General Bill Barr, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.), as well as the DOJ's Gail Slater—would all have us believe that Google is entrenched beyond the ability of the marketplace to remedy. 

The truth today is the same as it was in 2020: You couldn't pay phone manufacturers any sum of money to default to a search engine other than Google. Customers wouldn't like it. The same cannot be said for technology like ChatGPT and other generative AI tools. 

But so much has changed in the time it took Google's case to work its way through federal courts. That has everything to do with American innovation and entrepreneurship, and nothing to do with antitrust hackery. 

Judge Mehta did not grant antitrust crusaders their complete wish list; as such, this case should serve as a reminder that size alone is not a sin in American business. Dominance today doesn't guarantee anything tomorrow. More than almost any sector, the tech landscape is inherently fluid. Regulators interested in antitrust action should think of it much like a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer—and wield with humility.

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