Justice Department Doubles Down Against Google
ICLE President Geoffrey A. Manne was cited in this recent Reason article regarding the The Department of Justice’s revised proposed final judgment in its antitrust case against Google. Read full story here.
The claim that these remedies would substantially diminish Google’s near-90 percent share of the general search engine market is highly dubious. Geoffrey A. Manne, president and founder of the International Center for Law and Economics, described the proposed remedies as “fail[ing] to meet antitrust’s requirement of a tight causal connection between offense and relief,” while threatening browser competition—Firefox received 86 percent of its funding from Google in fiscal year 2021—and “dissuading venture capital in AI more broadly.”
Manne tells Reason that the “new proposal shows that the DOJ under President Donald Trump intends to continue the highly politicized approach to Big Tech antitrust.” A substantive continuation of the anti-Big Tech antitrust policy begun by the first Trump administration and intensified under former President Joe Biden bodes poorly for domestic investment, innovation, and consumer welfare.