Commentary
The United States needs big corporations to compete with China, especially those that commit hundreds of billions of dollars toward research and development.
Google has one of the best cybersecurity systems, for example, due to its extensive research expenditures. So the proposals by the U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) to effectively break up Google on antitrust grounds would weaken U.S. technological dominance and threaten the privacy of Google’s billions of American users and others around the world. Antitrust law should always put the welfare of citizens first.
The DOJ claims that Google has an illegal monopoly in parts of the advertising market. Forty-nine states are co-plaintiffs with the DOJ, and the judge agrees. Most Americans of all political stripes rightly want fair competition between U.S. companies and do not want a concentration of power in any single Big Tech company.
Antitrust cases against Microsoft helped fuel the rise of America’s Little Tech companies, including what was then Google. The next tech evolution will depend on fostering a highly competitive and diverse American ecosystem of tech companies from which the strongest will rise. U.S. antitrust law has done a world of good to make U.S. companies more competitive, and we should never stop believing in the power of individuals and small companies to rock the world.
But there are also economies of scale when going up against China Inc. Google’s revenue sharing with the likes of Apple, for example, to put Chrome above Microsoft’s Bing search browser is arguably a fair deal for both Google and Apple, and a decent outcome for consumers, most of whom prefer Chrome. On the international politics of the matter, the devil is in the details, especially when a company like Google has such global reach with its billions of users, and is such an expert at protecting user privacy against hackers and autocratic powers such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Some people have criticized the argument that national security is a reason to protect Google. But they may be trying to settle old scores, as Google’s algorithm allegedly discriminated against conservatives. More recently, Google has taken heat from liberals for striving to support the U.S. and Israeli militaries. Google Chrome’s sacking by the DOJ would likely elicit cheers from Beijing.
The DOJ wants Google to share private user data on searches with its competitors. This could include foreign rivals like ByteDance and Tencent, and is arguably a violation of user privacy and a de facto divestiture of Chrome. The data release could inadvertently release private user information to hackers and spies in adversary countries like China and Russia, who could use it to blackmail American citizens, including U.S. officials. It could also make Google less competitive in Europe, where its user base is already eroding.
The United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan have also investigated Google for antitrust violations. As Google’s market reach declines, China’s tech companies could make a play to replace it throughout Europe and East Asia.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai spoke to some of this in U.S. federal court in Washington on April 30. He said that, combined with Chrome’s search ranking algorithm, making user data available to competitors would allow reverse engineering of Google’s search technology, such that Google could become unable to compete. It would certainly help Google’s main competitor, Microsoft, which has a market capitalization of $2.9 trillion. Google’s market cap is about $1 trillion less.
It would be a major government taking from a private company and a gift to a larger company—something every American who believes in private property should be against. If the government goes through with its threats, further research and development on Chrome, which has been ongoing for 25 years, would likely halt, Pichai said. He rightly argues that the DOJ’s proposal will weaken the United States economically and hamper U.S. technological leadership.
Google should, of course, allow other companies from the United States and our allies to fully compete. That should arguably apply to any company, and is in the interests of the American consumer. Google should also ensure that its algorithm is not biased against conservatives. It should do more to ensure that scam websites are blocked, most especially those paying Google to rise to the top of Google search results. This is a case of the fox guarding the henhouse, and should be legislated against.
But antitrust and Federal Trade Commission measures against not only Google, but other U.S. companies such as Meta, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon, should be carefully reexamined given the context of international competition with authoritarian-backed technologies that could be advantaged by Google’s breakup.
China could already be outcompeting U.S. tech in many respects through apps like TikTok, Shein, and Temu. The Chinese economy is coordinated against the United States in one great state monopoly run from Beijing. All private American companies, including Google, are therefore at a disadvantage.
Until we defeat the CCP threat, we should avoid hobbling our own tech giants as they compete globally. It would be better to work with them to ensure that their global monopolies, if indeed they are global monopolies, advantage democracy against autocracy, while not impinging on the American people. Creative solutions to this problem exist, but they are not necessarily to be found in antitrust law dating back to the 19th century. Back then, the global tech competition with China could not have been foreseen. Today, it could determine the future of humanity.
