Washington Post (September 2)
The “slow and deliberate” legal system is mismatched for the technology industry. “Google’s market position looked impregnable” in 2020 when the Justice Department filed suit against the tech giant. “Without decisive government action, many feared a natural tendency toward monopoly.” Five years later when U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta rendered his opinion, “Google was already facing the first real threat to its power since… the early 2000s.” As people increasingly redirect their queries from search engines to artificial intelligence chatbots, Google “is no longer the only real player in the ‘finding out stuff on the internet’ business.” It now “has many rivals.” This means the court is “cracking down on a search monopoly that might be in the middle of cracking up due to the natural processes of creative destruction.” To his credit, “Mehta’s opinion recognizes that reshaping a market that’s already being reshaped is a formidable challenge. His decision is somewhat restrained, rather than the sweeping meddling the plaintiffs sought.”
