As the remedies phase of the Department of Justice’s antitrust lawsuit against Google wraps up, the most pressing question remains unanswered: What is the government actually trying to accomplish?
For a case that could reshape the American tech sector, it’s astonishing how little clarity the government has offered about the problem it’s trying to solve. The DOJ hasn’t identified actual consumer harm—nor has it proposed remedies that suggest they are focused on improving outcomes for users. Instead, the agency has proposed a grab bag of radical structural changes that seem less about restoring competition and more about punishing Google and asserting control over what it believes the digital marketplace should look like, based on vague notions of “fairness” to competitors—not consumers.
In doing so, the DOJ seems to have traded the consumer welfare standard, the bedrock of modern antitrust, for a model of central planning that would have bureaucrats decide winners and losers in tech markets.
Despite this, the DOJ is pressing ahead with remedies that would ban Google’s products from being the default on browsers and phones, force it to share its search data and algorithms with rivals and even break up its products. These proposals are sweeping, disruptive and unsupported by evidence of market failure.
What’s missing? Demonstrable proof of consumer harm. What exactly are we fixing here? The DOJ never tells us. Instead of starting with consumer injury and tailoring remedies for that accordingly, the government appears to be working backwards, deciding to punish Google first, and then figuring out how to justify it.
This style is a form of central planning. Their proposed remedies seek to rearrange the market until it looks the way regulators want it to. That includes ideas like forcing Google to divest the Chrome browser, mandating customer data to be handed over to rivals and banning AI integrations in services like Gmail and Android phones. That won’t broaden competition. It’s about bureaucrats picking winners and losers, justifying it on a subjective concept of “fairness.”
American antitrust law was never meant to operate on vibes, but the consequences of such an approach are unfortunately rather tangible.
These proposed actions would weaken privacy protections, undermine incentives for R&D and give a leg up to competitors not through innovation, but through government tinkering.
Even beyond Google, the DOJ’s proposals would ripple across the digital economy. Mozilla’s CFO testified during the trial that ending revenue-sharing deals could shutter Firefox, a direct competitor to Google’s Chrome—a perverse result in a case supposedly about browser competition.
Small businesses that rely on Google tools to reach customers could see reduced access, higher costs and fractured services. Advertisers could lose access to market-leading tools, and customers could be barred artificially from receiving the seamless and world-leading experiences they value today.
Antitrust law must not become a tool for the government to centrally plan markets or pick winners and losers for their own ideas of fairness. It is meant to protect consumers and preserve competitive incentives.
If the court accepts these vague, harsh remedies, it will mark a shift away from evidence-based enforcement and toward a subjective restructuring of American businesses. Key decisions would be made by unelected bureaucrats in Washington, rather than companies held to account by their customers. That shift would harm consumers, chill innovation and weaken America’s position in the global digital economy.
Fundamentally, this case presents a significant moment in the future of the U.S. economy.
Will consumers be in the driver’s seat deciding which businesses succeed and fail, or should government bureaucrats be empowered to design our economy to their preferences? Unfortunately, the DOJ has made it clear that it believes the latter.