A Watershed Decision for Fair Competition, Innovation, and Consumer Choice

This week marks a historic turning point in the fight for fair competition. U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta's landmark decision in U.S. v. Google has unequivocally found that Google willfully used illegal means to maintain its monopoly in the general search market. For over a decade, we've been advocating for legislators and enforcers to put monopoly power in check and rein in Google's egregious self-dealing that harms consumers, competition, and the open internet. The ripple effect of this decision will be felt for many years to come. It's a watershed moment for startups and innovation, and I believe it'll breathe oxygen into the market, allowing new companies to flourish and greatly improving consumer choice.

Judge Mehta ruled that Google is a monopolist and that it violated antitrust laws to maintain its monopoly in search. By locking up the internet search market through illegal partnerships with Apple and others to be the default search provider on web browsers and phones, and acting to halt the spread of new innovators, Google egregiously denied consumers choice and stifled competition. Google also used illegal means to monopolize the market for ads displayed next to search results. This important ruling validates the concerns we at Yelp have been raising for years.

It's been thirteen years since I testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust in 2011 about the harms of Google's self-dealing and illegal means of maintaining their monopoly in search. I concluded that testimony noting, "When one company controls the market, it ultimately controls consumer choice. If competition really were just 'one click away' as Google suggests, why have they invested so heavily to be the default choice on web browsers and mobile phones? Clearly, they are not taking any chances." Since then, Google has continued to abuse its dominant position, including by consistently entering into agreements that eliminate competitive choices consumers and businesses would otherwise have.

While we're heartened by the decision, a strong remedy is critical. As we've previously suggested, any remedy must both address Google's past misconduct and protect against future misconduct. Google should be required to compete based on the merits of its products and must be prohibited from continuing its exclusionary practices, such as exclusive default search deals and self-preferencing its own content in search results. During the trial, Google argued that vertical search providers, like Yelp, are rivals to Google Search, yet it has consistently used its monopoly to unfairly advantage its own search verticals at the expense of Yelp and others.

Additionally, to ensure a level playing field, Google must spin off services that have unfairly benefited from its search monopoly, a straightforward and enforceable remedy to prevent future anticompetitive behavior. As former Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy Tim Wu highlighted in The New York Times last fall, breakups have long been an effective tool to combat anticompetitive misconduct and foster innovation.

In 2011, shortly after former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's own testimony before the Senate, he acknowledged a well-known formula within Silicon Valley: that Big Tech companies run three-times faster than normal businesses and that governments run three-times slower. In other words, he knew that enforcement action would take years, if at all, and that Google could operate freely in the meantime. He was right. It did take years, but Google's free pass to unlawfully maintain its monopoly has finally run out thanks to the important work of the U.S. Department of Justice and state Attorneys General to vigorously address Google's misconduct.

I believe that Judge Mehta's decision will be as consequential, if not more so, than the Microsoft antitrust case 23 years ago. That decision spurred an era of unprecedented innovation that allowed promising startups to flourish, including Google. It's exciting to imagine the new technologies and innovation we'll see emerge as a result of this ruling over the next decade and beyond.