There’s a saying in hockey: You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.
On Tuesday a federal court in Washington had a wide-open shot to hold Google accountable for sweeping antitrust violations. Instead of taking the shot, the court banked the puck off the boards, hoping for a lucky bounce.
Last year, after years of grueling litigation, the same court ruled that Google illegally monopolized online search. For those of us who believe in vigorous antitrust enforcement, it was a breakthrough. At long last, a court confirmed what law enforcement, rival companies and consumers long suspected: Google had abused its dominance to snuff out competition. The court’s ruling validated the simple truth that antitrust law applies as forcefully to today’s Silicon Valley giants as it once did to the robber barons of steel and rail.
The court’s remedy was supposed to translate that victory into accountability. But Tuesday’s ruling, which requires that Google share its search results and some other data with rival companies, fell short. The court declined to order Google to divest its Chrome browser. Puzzlingly, it even permitted Google to keep paying billions of dollars each year to rivals like Apple to make Google search the default choice on their devices — even though that was the very tactic that Google used to illegally cement its dominance.
This isn’t just about righting past wrongs. The court’s weak remedy also gives Google a green light to run much of the same unlawful search playbook with artificial intelligence (such as its Gemini chatbot) without fear of consequence.
The court declined to impose clear, decisive obligations on Google, despite the fact that the company is a repeat offender. In the past year, three federal courts found that it violated antitrust laws. Judges in all three cases excoriated Google for destroying evidence.
For those of us who fought this battle against Google, Tuesday’s result was deflating. The first Trump administration filed the case in 2020, backed by a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general. When I became head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division in 2021, I inherited the case, oversaw the trial and helped draft the government’s initial set of proposed remedies. The second trial to determine remedies, which resulted in Tuesday’s ruling, was led again by a bipartisan team of state attorneys general and President Trump’s Justice Department.