Twenty-five years of antitrust litigation and the Oil Conglomerate’s “monopoly” — a 20-year anniversary of Standard Oil’s dissolution

“This case is an extremely big deal. It’s hard to overstate it,” she said. “It is at least as big a deal as the Microsoft case, which is the last big antitrust case that we had. That was 25 years ago.

The case Microsoft filed in 1998 was concerning the company’s use of Internet Explorer with its Windows operating system. It nearly led to the company being split in two — but Microsoft and the DOJ settled.

The 1904 Standard Oil case is widely considered the first major monopoly case. A federal court found that John D. Rockefeller’s oil conglomerate dominated the American refining industry. Standard Oil was ordered to break up into around 40 different companies as a result.

Google or Google? It’s ok to sell it, but it doesn’t matter: Google can’t do what it takes to stop it

Billions of dollars are found in search revenue by Chrome, says Dahlquist. It’s the world’s most popular search engine. Forcing Google to sell off this piece of the company would “allow rivals to compete,” he said. He believes that this is a violation of federal antitrust laws and that it’s a market reality, that Google’s ownership of Chrome disincentivizes emergence of new, competitive alternatives.

Competition within the space is healthy and varied as evidenced by the success of competitors’ chatbot, such as Grok. “The notion that ChatGPT can’t get distribution is absurd. They have more distribution than anyone,” he said.

Now, lawyers for Google and the Justice Department are facing off again at the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, D.C. The penalties Mehta will levy against the company will be determined this time.

Over the next several weeks, both sides will present evidence and are expected to call a host of witnesses, including major tech industry players. That includes Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of search engine competitor DuckDuckGo, as well as senior VP’s of Yahoo, Apple, Microsoft, ChatGPT and Google, according to court documents — though that lineup could change.

The DOJ’s argument, on the other hand, is that Google has built itself a nearly insurmountable lead through its illegal actions, and so the only fair thing to do is help competitors catch up. During the trial, Microsoft’s CEO claimed that the only way to build a great search engine was by amassing a lot of search data, and that it was only one company that had that data. Mehta asked if the data-sharing and licensing provisions could be considered to be a Structural remedy, which would require a higher burden of proof. How to make the fight fair will be one of the questions that will be asked.

In response, on Monday morning as she stood outside the courthouse, Gail Slater, the DOJ’s Assistant Attorney for the Antitrust Decision, replied, “You know what is dangerous? The freedom of digital market innovation is at risk due to the threat posed by the internet giant.

The attorneys for the government read statements about an hour before proceedings began. They did not take questions from the gathered media.

DOJ’s Antitrust Case: The End of the Digital Technology-Newtonian Love-Hate Relationship – Opening Statements

The acting director of the DOJ’s antitrust civil litigation division spoke in opening statements. He gave a list of demands that the government wants to see executed by the internet company.

He said that this is a big moment for the industry. He asked if the U.S. will allow a monopolist likeGoogle to control the search market or allow it to prevail.

This case marked the beginning of the end of the long love affair between the tech world and Washington, D.C. For many years, the tech industry expanded with little regulatory control. But major tech players Meta, Amazon and Apple are now also facing federal lawsuits.

Meta is currently facing an antitrust case, which is being played out in the same courthouse that has the remedy trial playing out. The agency argues Meta has abused its power and acted as a monopoly by acquiring rivals in order to vanquish them as competitors.

The DOJ is also asking that Google stop making monthly third-party payments to phone makers to ensure its browser is the default option on those phones.

The government wants to go a step further to ensure any remedy prevents Google from establishing similar exclusive agreements for its generative AI products, like Gemini. Dahlquist said the rise of Google’s AI products could open up another field the company could dominate if it’s allowed to keep using exclusive contracts — and they want to prevent that from happening.

In the past four years the company has claimed that it has never acted a monopoly and that any changes, even small ones, are unnecessary. The company’s leaders said its search product is superior, and that’s why it dominates the industry.

John E. Schmidtlein, a lawyer for Google, argued in opening statements that the DOJ’s list of remedies in this case is just a “wishlist for competitors,” and that it will enable them to get resources that took Google decades to develop.

Addressing the DOJ’s effort to prevent Google from including Gemini in future exclusive distribution agreements, Schmidtlein said that Gemini was not the subject of the antitrust case and the company does not hold a monopoly on AI products.

There is still a lot of trial and a lot of negotiations left, but as it stands the two sides are far apart. Google, which plans to appeal the case in its entirety, thinks all will be fair as long as it’s easier to pick your own search engine. The government doesn’t believe that Google can be allowed in its present form. Judge Mehta, who asked a number of questions about the precedent for some of these requests, seems to be continually calibrating his own tolerance for sweeping change. If there’s an easy way to arrive at some middle ground that works for everybody, it hasn’t come up in court.

During the trial, the market came up occasionally, but now it seems like it’s front and center for both sides. The DOJ’s proposed remedies are so severe, Dahlquist argued, because “Google is using the same strategy they did for search, and applying it to Gemini.” He was careful to say he doesn’t think the search market is competitive, and that the rise ofchatGP will not convince the court that the search market is competitive.

Near the beginning of his opening arguments, David Dahlquist, a lawyer for the US Department of Justice, showed a slide that he described as Google’s “vicious cycle.” It goes like this, in that it pays huge sums of money to be the default search engine, thus it can get more queries, better data, and make more money, and it can afford more defaults. Google doesn’t really disagree with this assessment — but in it’s telling, that’s a virtuous cycle. It is described as the virtuous cycle that makes search so powerful. Google believes it’s created a perfect system; the DOJ thinks it’s a nightmare. A judge will make the final call.