Is the future of anti-trust in the USA being written now?

Tim Wu, The Google Trial Is Going to Rewrite Our Future, NYTimes, Sept. 18, 2023.

The Google antitrust trial, which began last week, is ostensibly focused on the past — on a series of deals that Google made with other companies over the past two decades. [...]

But the true focus of the trial, like that of the Federal Trade Commission’s coming trial of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, on monopolization charges, is on the future. For the verdict will effectively establish the rules governing tech competition for the next decade, including the battle over commercialized artificial intelligence, as well as newer technologies we cannot yet envision.

The history of antitrust prosecutions shows this again and again: Loosening the grip of a controlling monopolist may not always solve the problem at hand (here, an online search monopoly). But it can open up closed markets, shake up the industry and spark innovation in unexpected areas.

Google, then and now:

Google began as a small start-up with a great product, but it was also a beneficiary of federal government intervention. Google began its operations reliant on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, which had a roughly 95 percent market share in the early 2000s. And Microsoft was running its own search engine on Internet Explorer, then called MSN Search (later renamed Bing). Fortunately for Google, Microsoft had just been put through the wringer by the Justice Department, whose antitrust lawsuit nearly led to a breakup of the company. In the end, Google beat Bing in part because it had a better product — but also because it wasn’t facing the nasty Microsoft of the 1990s, but rather a weakened and chastened Microsoft operating under federal oversight.

Today Google is both interested in and threatened by the large language model technology of companies like OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT. Google has spent many billions of dollars on A.I. research, including developing its own chatbot, Bard, and recently rushed to incorporate dozens of A.I. features into its products. But as a giant, entrenched company, Google has the disadvantage of needing to protect its existing revenue streams and keep its investors, customers and advertisers happy. It has a strong incentive to make sure that A.I. doesn’t turn into something that disrupts or destroys its current business.

At the trial in Washington last week, the prosecution (which includes the federal as well as state governments) made clear that Google leveraged its money and power over the past decade to stifle competition, paying companies like Apple and Samsung billions of dollars to make Google the default search setting for their phones. Apple also agreed to stay out of Google’s business: handling search queries.

That’s why Judge Mehta should force Google to sell off its Chrome browser (which has a roughly 63 percent market share) and ban the company’s “pay for default” deals with the operating systems for Apple and Android phones. [...]

The cases against Google and Meta are, in effect, a distinctively American form of industrial policy. Many countries choose to subsidize their tech monopolists, but the United States has shown that undermining a monopolist’s dominance can be a better alternative.

There's more at the link.