ICLE Academic Affiliate John Lopatka appeared as a guest on KCBS Radio in San Francisco to discuss the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust case against Google. The full audio clip is embedded below.

Abstract

The United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and three overlapping groups of states have filed federal antitrust cases alleging Google has monopolized internet search, search advertising, internet advertising technologies, and app distribution on Android phones. In this Article, we focus on the DOJ’s claims that Google has used contracts with tech firms that distribute Google’s search services in order to exclude rival search providers and thus to monopolize the markets for search and search advertising—the two sides of Google’s search platform. The primary mechanisms of exclusion, according to the DOJ, are the many contracts Google has used to secure its status as the default search engine at all major search access points. The complaint echoes the DOJ’s claims two decades ago that Microsoft illegally maintained its monopoly in personal computer operating systems by forming exclusionary contracts with distributors of web browsers, and by tying its Internet Explorer browser to Windows. The gist of the case was that Microsoft had used exclusionary tactics to thwart the competitive threat Netscape’s Navigator browser and Sun Microsystems’ Java programming technologies—both forms of “middleware”—posed to the Windows monopoly. In this Article, we argue that the treatment of market definition, exclusionary contracting, causation, and remedies in the D.C. Circuit’s Microsoft decision has important lessons for the Google litigation.

People need to eat. All else equal, the more food that can be produced from an acre of land, the better off they’ll be. Of course, people want to pay as little as possible for their food to boot. At heart, the antitrust analysis of the pending agribusiness mergers requires a simple assessment of their effects on food production and price. But making that assessment raises difficult questions about institutional competence.

Read the full piece here.