The case ignores a competitive, thriving tech sector

Rather than tailoring remedies to address the contracts at issue, the DOJ’s proposed remedies are pushing for structural changes and sweeping restrictions that ignore the evolving nature of the search market in an attempt to benefit Google’s competitors. Even while search is undergoing one of its greatest innovation periods in decades and competition is thriving — with TikTok, OpenAI, and up to 2,000 startups formed by former Google employees gaining market share — the DOJ is attacking Google for competing and innovating.

— Former Senator Phil Gramm also pointed out in The Wall Street Journal that Google’s payments for default placement is no different from Coca-Cola paying for prime shelf space — a routine and pro-consumer marketing practice.

The DOJ’s remedies would hurt consumers by removing Google’s incentive to innovate

In his testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai shared a simple truth: that there are “hardly any exceptions to the rule that the best products win.” Ignoring this rule harms consumers by discouraging investment in Google’s most popular products. In his testimony, Harvard Professor James Mickens echoed this point, making clear that breaking up Chrome from Google would likely change the user experience – and almost certainly not for the better.

Google has a long history in investing in innovation. Last year alone, Google invested $49 billion in research and development. These investments have led to Nobel-winning advancements in diverse fields like quantum computing. Commenting on the proposed data sharing remedies, Wharton Professor Herb Hovenkamp asked, what’s the “incentive to invest”?

— Representative Ro Khanna echoed this sentiment on CNBC: “Why wouldn’t you want the search profits invested in DeepMind so we can have more Nobel laureates… This idea of just breaking them up makes no sense.”

Forced data sharing puts privacy at risk

Another troubling aspect of DOJ’s proposed remedies is the requirement for Google to hand over massive amounts of sensitive and highly detailed advertising and analytics data to rivals. This would be in addition to the 90% of code for the Chromium codebase Google already offers to competitors, but without any meaningful privacy safeguards. Even Google’s competitors have admitted under oath that these “privacy concerns are not made up.”

— Anshel Sag of Moor Insights & Strategy observed that “there is more trust in Google” among CIOs and CISOs because of the company’s serious commitment to privacy and security.

Overly burdensome remedies would threaten America’s tech ecosystem

Experts are increasingly concerned about the broader risks behind the proposed DOJ’s remedies. As we pointed out before, Wedbush’s Scott Devitt cautioned that kneecapping major American tech companies is dangerous when competition from China’s tech industry is rapidly growing. Furthermore, the R Street Institute, a public policy think tank, described the remedy as one “searching for an ailment.” Cancelling search contracts would harm the companies Google is paying more than Google itself, especially “smaller companies that derive a larger portion of their revenues from search revenue agreements.”

— As we noted before, Mozilla, one of the biggest detractors of the DOJ’s remedies, declared that these remedies “tilt the playing field further into the hands of a few dominant players, diminishing consumer choice and weakening the broader internet ecosystem.”

As the trial now spotlights testimony from Google’s witnesses, one thing is becoming undeniable: the DOJ’s proposed remedies are about punishing Google, not protecting consumers.

Read more on the Google search case here, here, and here.