Beautiful Virgin Islands

Tuesday, Oct 14, 2025

Antitrust: Lawsuits force Google to play defense

Antitrust: Lawsuits force Google to play defense

The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web
After years of prodding from competitors and critics, Google is facing "a mountain of lawsuits" challenging its dominance of the internet, said Jennifer Saba and Gina Chon at Reuters BreakingViews. Recently, 38 states charged the search-engine giant with trying to use its power to "muscle its way" into similar control in areas from cars to smarthome devices.

The new claims add to a suit filed earlier by 10 states, led by Texas, that accuses Google of misusing its power in internet advertising. All this comes on top of an October lawsuit from the Justice Department centered on deals the company made with phone makers to give its search engine a favored spot.

Taken together, the lawsuits promise "the release of reams of documents, including potentially embarrassing emails" that will leave Google locked in litigation for years. For Google, the burden of defending itself could turn out to be "death by 1,000 briefs."

This is just the start of a long and painful process, said Brent Kendall at The Wall Street Journal. The U.S. district judge in Washington "set a tentative trial date" for the DOJ's case: Sept. 12, 2023. "If anybody thought we would be getting to trial quickly," the judge said, "this certainly will dispel that notion."

The most sensational wrinkle in these antitrust cases comes in the Texas suit, said Gilad Edelman at Wired. In it, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says Google made "an unlawful agreement" with ­Facebook — a deal code-named Jedi Blue by the ­companies — to send publishers to Google rather than competing ad platforms.

This "falls under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act," which bars concerted efforts between companies to restrain competition, and is a simpler case to make than proving Google abused monopoly power. That said, "the complaint is maddeningly redacted," and the suit was brought by an attorney general who is "fresh off a losing effort to overturn the presidential election."

The three major lawsuits filed against the company include a raft of accusations, but are short on demonstrating "tangible consumer harm," said Billy Binion at Reason. What most rankles the states and the Justice Department is "Google's bigness." Yes, "the tech giant maintains the biggest share of internet search, with current estimates landing at 88 percent."

But the remedies being tossed around just make things worse for users. States want to break up Google's businesses to give competitors such as Yelp and TripAdvisor a chance to top off search results, which now tend to highlight Google's own services. Instead of getting "direct answers and relevant information" you'll scroll through pages of inferior results­ — an outcome that consumers don't actually want.

The Google suits have already become entangled in partisan warfare, said The Washington Post in an editorial, and it's hard to separate the legitimate concerns about competition from the "state-sponsored bullying." Google's role as buyer, seller, and middleman in the ad markets points to a need for regulation.

But the Texas case was "filed exclusively by Republican attorneys general" and has so many redactions it is "impossible to evaluate on the merits." Democrats want the incoming Biden administration to "grapple with companies' outsize power," but the new president will have to first "dispel the partisan cloud that his predecessor has cast" over tech regulation.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
×