Google’s Antitrust Moment: The Information’s Tech Briefing

The day finally arrived: The current swell of antitrust investigations of big tech resulted in an actual case with the filing of the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Google. Years from now though, when Google’s influence declines—which it almost certainly will eventually—this lawsuit isn’t likely to be the reason.

One common view of the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Microsoft—which was filed in 1998 and settled a few years later—is that it caused a flourishing of competition, giving rise to new tech powerhouses in search (Google), social media (Facebook) and mobile (Apple and Google). At best, this conclusion is debatable. One could just as easily credit Microsoft’s bureaucracy and its hyper-focus on preserving a software business model predicated on a fading category of devices, PCs, for subsequent tech innovations.