Politics

Excellent article that really looks at the history of antitrust law and draws a pretty spot-on analysis of the current case, and how the presiding judge, Amit Mehta, compares to Harold Greene, who broke up AT&T:

There is also a loss of faith in American institutions writ broadly, which differs from the 1980s. At the same time as he’s been dealing with Google, Mehta is presiding over trials of January 6th perpetrators, a showcase of the deep fissures that simply did not exist decades earlier. One result is that the politics of corporate power is very different, and that antitrust is on a generational and bipartisan upswing. (Indeed, Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr brought the case, Biden’s antitrust chief, Jonathan Kanter, is continuing it.)

The net effect is that Mehta is an important actor here, but not as important as Greene. The case is likely to be appealed, probably all the way to the Supreme Court. And if the Supreme Court erodes antitrust caselaw against Google, then Congress will be confronted with the reality that it is hard to use the existing antitrust laws to address big tech. But ultimately if no cases against dominant firms succeed, then eventually Congress will change the law. Moreover, this case isn’t a one-off; the environment is less like AT&T in 1982, or even Microsoft in 1998, and more like that of the turn of the 19th century, when Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson brought dozens of cases against dominant firms. This is one chapter in the fight over corporate power, but not the only one.

I think the author is being a bit too hopeful here that Congress will enact stronger anti-trust legislation if the case fails, but he's likely right about this eventually ending up in front of the Supreme Court.