pot1 write: The Justice Department spent three years in two presidential administrations building the case that Google illegally abused its power over online search to reduce competition. To defend itself, Google brought in hundreds of employees and three high-powered law firms and spent millions of dollars on lawyers’ fees and lobbyists. On Tuesday, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia will begin considering their arguments of a trial that gets to the heart of a long-simmering question: Did today’s tech giants become dominant by breaking the law?
The case — US et al. v. Google — is the federal government’s first antitrust trial in the modern Internet era, as a generation of technology companies wields enormous influence over commerce, information, public discourse, entertainment and labor. The lawsuit moves the antitrust battle against these companies into a new phase, moving from challenging their mergers and acquisitions to a deeper examination of the businesses that propel them to power. Such a follow-on tech powerhouse case hasn’t developed since the Justice Department sued Microsoft in 1998 for antitrust violations.
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