Google chief executive Sundar Pichai. The trial should mark an inflection point, allowing society to better control the tech sector’s operations and impacts. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty
The Microsoft trial centred on whether the company engaged in anticompetitive practices by making it difficult for computer manufacturers and consumers to uninstall and replace Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft lost, but avoided being broken up. That this is the first big antitrust case since United States of America v Microsoft Corporation is astonishing. For a quarter of a century, the US shelved its ample powers to rein in monolithic companies. And yet, since that trial we’ve witnessed the rise of the richest and most powerful companies in history, mostly US technology multinationals.
Arguments can be made that US antitrust law is too piecemeal, or difficult to use effectively, or currently focused too much on whether consumers are harmed, measured in the short term. At the time of the Microsoft trial, a big tech sector complaint was that antitrust law was outdated, slow and ultimately ineffectual for such a fast-changing sector.
Google search isn’t about search, it’s about mega-scale data gathering, no longer a side effect but the intent, with documentable societal and competitive harms