Google is one of the most dangerous corporations in the world.
Google knows more about us than most of our families, answering intimate questions from billions of us, every day, and controlling much of our communications to boot. It has 95% market share in search, annual revenue of a little less than $300 billion, and 15 products with more than 500 million users. We’ve perhaps never seen any corporate asset as powerful as Google search, with marketing professor Scott Galloway going so far as to say in 2017 that “Google is God.”
On August 5, 2024, a federal judge declared Google to be an illegal monopolist.
After the most significant antitrust trial in decades, the DOJ’s historic case against Google’s search monopoly brought to a close one of several antitrust cases now facing the company--and marked the second time Google has been found an illegal monopolist since late 2023. The DOJ’s case took direct aim at the illegal deals Google uses prevent competition from emerging, lock in its dominance in search and adjacent markets, and make the internet worse for everyone.
With the threat of a break up looming, Google is terrified.
Now that Google has lost in multiple cases brought by the government and private parties, a structural remedy or divestiture is firmly on the table. Afraid it will no longer be able to leverage its ill-gotten dominance to dominate the future of the digital world, Google is unleashing a full scale PR blitz and paid-influence campaign to discredit any effort to bring its business in line with the law.
