Justice Department Sues Monopolist Google, Inc. for Violating AntiTrust Laws

Justice Department Sues Monopolist Google, Inc. for Violating AntiTrust Laws

Written by Radix Verum
October 20, 2020 at 5:24 pm

Washington DC — October 20, 2020 — The U.S. Department of Justice, along with eleven Attorneys General have filed suit against Google, Inc. for monopolistic and anti-competitive business practices today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Senator Josh Hawley called the decision a “good start” in taking action against the search giant.

I attended the Pen & Pad Virtual Briefing this morning headed by Assistant U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen, here is the recording from that conference call:

      DOJandGOOGLE

Although I jumped to get into the queue, I was not able to ask the question I had.

I reached out to the DOJ Public Relations Office with the following:

  1. Big Tech now comprises 20 percent of the entire U.S. Stock Market. This is a bigger monopoly than the U.S. Railroad monopolies of the 1900s. How do you plan on addressing this? Given that with Standard Oil, when they were broken up they simply owned all six (6) smaller companies and thus still maintained their monopoly.
  2. When it comes to anti-competitive business practices, one thing we have seen is how Google will colluded behind the scenes with Apple and others to remove third party apps, like Gab from their app stores. They have also been known to, at the same time, prevent access to search and terminate the third parties ability to use things like Google Docs and Gmail. Do you plan on addressing this kind of insidious collusion?

These are the kinds of questions that should have been asked.

Interestingly, the Democrat Attorneys General were not interested in holding Google accountable. One has to wonder just how much Google has donated to their political careers?

Chris Menahan of Information Liberation is totally correct here in that these big tech companies have become essential utilities, just like the telecommunications companies.

This is another issue entirely. While the Complaint filed today addressing violations of Section II of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, it does not address Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which is what provides them with immunity as a neutral platform(s). They are no longer neutral platforms, they have been acting as publishers, editorializing and squelching legitimate news, going so far as to block news from publication.

Law 360 no longer provides the same level of neutral publishing it once prided as its hallmark.

Google has tried to deflect from the issues by pointing to Microsoft and claiming they are the real monopoly. This is absurd. The Department of Justice pursued Microsoft 20 years ago for the same kinds of things Google is doing today.

Yet another Google whistleblower has come forward to provide testimony about how Google puts their thumb on the scale, and is biased against conservatives. He also related that Google made him travel to train Chinese replacements, which begs the question — just how deeply has Google been penetrated by the Chinese Communist Party?

The Wall Street Journal seems to have the best understanding of the real issues underlying the Complaint and why they are so important. They published a long form expose today.

Though an important start, I do not believe today’s actions go specifically or deeply enough, unfortunately. I hope there is still more to come in the weeks and months ahead.

Google has long been criticized for working with the Chinese Communist Party while simultaneously declining to work for the U.S. Military.

CEO of Alphabet, Inc and its subsidiary Google LLC, Sundar Pichai should be brought back in front of Congress and the American people to explain what actions he will take to remedy the multitudinous issues at the company.

From the Press Conference Packet, we get some background information on today’s case:

2020 10 20 – Google Case Backgrounder – Final

As you can see, this is a wide-ranging probe.

From a legal perspective, the background on this case shows that Google has a tremendous monopoly and in fact, the case should have been brought long ago.

As you can see, Google operates monopolies in many parts of the consumer electronic industry. When smaller companies got in their way, they simply forced them out or bought them up.

Google AG Statement_10.20_FINAL

Today’s statement by Attorney General William P. Barr clearly sends a shot across the bows of all of these big tech companies, that if you are engaged in illegal conduct, the U.S. Department of Justice can and will enforce the law and come after you.

Press Release For Google 10.20_FINAL

Deputy AG Rosen published a three-page statement on the case as well.

Google complaint (filed)

And finally, we have the 64-page Complaint itself.

The Justice Department declined to answer when asked whether or not they had spoken to Larry Page, former co-founder of Google. Interestingly, no question was asked about Sergey Brin, the Moscow-born second co-founder whose sister-in-law, Susan Wojicki, currently heads up Google’s YouTube. Brin’s wife, Anne Wojicki currently runs 23andMe, a DNA database and testing company.

This story is still on-going, we will continue to update if the Department of Justice responds to our request for comment. 

See a spelling or grammar error? Let us know! Highlight the text and press Ctrl+Enter.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

You may also like...