In a compelling op-ed, University of Pennsylvania law professor Herbert Hovenkamp argues that the Justice Department’s efforts to break up Google in the name of antitrust would ultimately harm consumers and stifle innovation, making a strong case for why the DOJ’s remedies are misguided and unlikely to achieve their intended goals.

Breaking up Google would ultimately harm consumers and the broader internet.

Hovenkamp warns of the far-reaching consequences of breaking up Google: “If the government is successful at breaking up Google, history tells us that consumers and many enterprises tied to our vast and flourishing internet may ultimately pay a price.”

Antitrust remedies should correct monopolies, not punish success.

He reminds readers of the fundamental purpose of antitrust law: “The entire point of antitrust law is to promote competitive markets. Antitrust remedies are not designed to punish a wrongdoer but rather to correct the effects of a monopoly.”

The DOJ’s proposals could worsen Google’s quality and result in a fractured system that requires greater user effort to get inferior results.

Hovenkamp critiques the DOJ’s proposed remedies, including forcing Google to divest Chrome and barring it from setting itself as the default search engine: “If the government gets everything it wants, the result could remove some of the features that have made Google products so successful and result in a fractured system that requires greater user effort to get inferior results.”

Courts have a “poor” record of success with restructuring industries.

Pointing to past antitrust cases, Hovenkamp highlights the poor track record of court-mandated breakups: “History has shown us that courts are generally poor instruments for restructuring industries. Too often they simply make firms less competitive. The record of success is particularly poor in situations involving highly innovative companies that, like Google, have developed mainly by internal growth, rather than through acquisitions.”

Consumers continue to choose Google because it’s the “most popular.”

Even without exclusivity agreements, Hovenkamp argues, Google would remain the most popular search engine: “But if people were completely free to choose, Google would likely be the most popular option regardless — in the European Union, where Google’s Android system is required to ask users to select from a choice of browsers, most of them choose Google search.”

Mandated breakups in innovative markets are “perilous.”

Hovenkamp concludes by cautioning against the unpredictable consequences of forced breakups in rapidly evolving industries: “In highly innovative markets mandated breakups are perilous, because the consequences are so hard to predict.”                                                     

For more on the Google Search remedies, read here, here, and here.