Google’s Antitrust Battle Looms: The Information’s Tech Briefing

If you haven’t boned up on antitrust law, now’s the time. Multiple news reports in the past day or so suggest the Justice Department will file its much-anticipated case against Alphabet in the next week, kicking off what is likely to be the first of several cases against big tech in the coming months.

According to the New York Times today, the government has decided to focus the lawsuit on Google’s dominance in search, setting aside the issue of its dominance of ad technology in the interests of a quicker lawsuit. That’s bad news for Alphabet. As we noted in this story, a case focused on the ad tech world would play to Google’s advantage. The arcane world of ad tech would be hard for lawyers to explain in a trial.